My synagogue was one of the Yemeni mail-bomb terror targets. It is impossible to write a sentence like that without feeling the worst of humanity well up inside your being. But sometimes it’s when you feel the most hateful of urges that healing the world has the best chance to begin.

When the weekend started, I thought the emotional highlight for me would be giving my first lead at my longtime codependence recovery group. I didn’t expect the amazing feeling of sharing the story of the love and healing I’ve found in my life this year (which I’ve already shared here) would be topped an hour later.

I was happy to make it from my recovery group to Friday evening Shabbat services on time. We were having our own lead, of sorts, as well, so we had a fairly good turnout to hear it. Then shortly before services began, Rabbi Zedek informed us that our synagogue was one of the Yemeni mail-bomb terror targets.

As he went on to tell world media Saturday morning when an international group of reporters attended our Hebrew Torah study group (those are words you just can’t make up), a high-profile Jewish and secular leader wishing to remain anonymous phoned him on Friday afternoon to say, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that Emanuel Congregation wasn’t one of the targets. The bad news is that Or Chadash was.”

Or Chadash is the LGBT congregation that shares Emanuel’s building, along with the Chicago Jewish Day School. One mail room. One building. Our collective spiritual home. All of us. Ouch.

Rabbi Zedek reminded us that situations like this are normal in the rest of the world. But he admonished us to remember that though that sad definition of normalcy has now fallen upon our community, it’s important not to let it change who we are–and perhaps more importantly, how we are.

How we were Friday evening was shocked. In our rabbi’s words, heartbroken. There was unspoken anger, too (some of which indeed got spoken on Saturday morning.) And yet, there was something else, too. There were Kabbalat Shabbat songs sung with unusual verve and unison. There was palpably heartfelt recitation of the core prayers of our tradition. There was rapt attention given to our speaker, Rabbi Douglas Kohn, as he discussed editing the first-ever book about how to live with cancer from a faith-based perspective (Life, Faith, Cancer.) There was a hearty round of Gut Shabboses and Shabbat Shaloms as we all retreated to the coffee and cake of the oneg.

There was love is what there was. Of community. Of each other. A big, fat, Jewish Whoville of sorts, facing off with yet another hateful, hurtful Grinch, and deciding to respond in song to Adonai and celebration with one another. Martin Buber might call that ‘active love,’ the decision to realize something higher, activate something better inside of yourself in response to a life whose circumstances might otherwise conspire to prompt you to sleepwalk–or rage–through your journey.

One of Judaism’s most beloved ancient sages, Hillel, phrased it as a question. “If I am not for myself then who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, than what am I?” Hillel might be proud. This weekend, a synagogue full or people in Edgewater decided exactly what they were: a community. Of Jews, no less.

Funny thing about Judaism, one its most abiding tenets is little known beyond the faith. Tikkun Olam. The eternal admonition to repair the world. Because it’s broken, and this weekend’s events were good evidence of that. Repair the world for all of us, with all of us, together. Not all of us Jews, but all of us humans. Because we’re all in this living-on-planet-Earth business together. And because, together, we deserve nothing less.

Often Tikkun Olam involves fighting for the rights of the oppressed, raising environmental consciousness, or otherwise practicing acts of charity and kindness. Sometimes, though, its spirit is expressed in a simple decision. What do I do next? Which way forward? In the immediacy of crisis, do I let rage the dark forces of anger at those who most certainly deserve our anger? (For Judaism decidedly does not teach us to love our enemies.) Or do I make a deliberate choice to harness more healing forces? And aim those forces of light at others in my community also in danger of slipping into unrequitable anger.

Having been among the exodus of New Yorkers walking across bridges out of Manhattan on 9/11, I’m not usually phased by news of things like individual mail bombs. Yet after services and the overall media frenzy at synagogue Saturday morning, I went in the bathroom and cried. And I’m not even a Jew yet. But there was a great blessing for me in that personal expression of heartbreak. As I continue my conversion journey to join the Jewish people, thousands of pages of reading, hours of study to learn prayers in an unfamiliar language, and maxing out my Android phone with Jewish day-camp songs will eventually a Jew make on the outside.

But now I know where I stand on the inside. I have a Yemeni terrorist to thank for helping me recognize all the love I feel for this journey, this synagogue, this congregation. My congregation. My spiritual home. My Jewish journey continues to take me places inside of myself I never knew were there. There are also places towards which I suspect this journey is leading me (in the greatest spirit of Lech L’cha) that it is too soon to share. But I can see them coming. I am better, and very grateful, for the unexpected doorways of love and compassion…and faith…that this journey has privileged me to discover.

May Adonai allow those doors to remain forever open as wide as the hearts and minds of a modest little congregation on the shores of Lake Michigan that decided to keep on repairing the world on Friday night.

(Photo: Sometimes the things we say don’t come out the way we intend.)

People say the strangest things to me in downtown Chicago. This past weekend was a trifecta. Sunday afternoon I ran into Marina City’s own Vincent Falk, aka the colorful, tour-boat-waving Riverace (rhymes with Liberace), standing together with Marina City Online scribe Steve Dahlman mid-span on the State Street Bridge.

“Vincent, do you know our neighbor, Mike Doyle?” asked Dahlman. “He’s another famous blogger in the building.”

“Of course, but he looks sad today,” replied Vincent, fingering my navy pullover. “See? He’s blue!”

Long ago I learned no one approaches Riverace without being badly punned. Dahlman chuckled.

“Dahlman, I can’t believe you laughed at that,” I said. “Even Vincent doesn’t think it’s funny, and he said it.”

I had just traded emails with Dahlman earlier in the afternoon, cajoling him for not commenting under the feature I wrote about him and his blog over at Chicagosphere. For someone with a local reputation built on trading condo gossip (I knew I liked him for a reason), he definitely has a tendency to soft-shoe his self-promotion.

He also has a tendency to bury the lead.

“Hey, I forgot to tell you, I’m getting married!” he cooed as we retreated from Vincent towards Wacker Drive.

“You’re what?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes, me, getting married,” Dahlman answered.

“To a woman?” I asked, still not getting the memo.

Dahlman did his best Judy Tenuta in reply. “YEEEES!” he snarled in my direction.

“You didn’t tell me that before because why?” I asked.

“It slipped my mind,” replied Dahlman.

More likely you wanted to be sure you were ready for the news to be public knowledge before telling me, I thought. “Is this off the record?” I probed.

“Not at all,” Dahlman continued. “We’re aiming for August. She’s a really nice woman, my age–mid-forties, a nonprofit executive. She almost as much as asked me. There’s just one problem.”

Just the one? Thankfully, that was my inside voice.

“Tell me,” I said.

“We’d like some space, but I can’t leave Marina City,” Dahlman lamented. “The access to write about these buildings is too good to leave behind now. We need a two-bedroom somewhere in the towers.”

Only 16 out of Marina City’s 80 floors of apartments even have two-bedroom units, so I understood Dahlman’s dilemma: marriage or Marina City, but potentially not both.

I managed to muster, “Congratulations, anyway!” as I continued down State. I was on my way to dinner with Matt Countant, my bean-counter friend from West Tower. I hoped for the evening to be less contentious than the last time we hung out.

Lightweight that I am, I knew not to share a bottle of wine with a native South Sider. But the curiously dry gyros we were served at the usually amazing Parthenon last week needed to be washed down with something.

As Matt tried to guide my tottering form back towards Marina City, I told him how wondrous it still felt after four years in the towers to spend an evening out and be able to walk back home completely in downtown Chicago.

“We don’t live in downtown,” was Matt’s immediate response.

Oh, no he didn’t. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Of course we live downtown. Where do you think downtown starts?”

“Inside the ‘L’ loop,” said Matt. “That’s downtown. Everything else is just near downtown.”

Am I, like, drunk and high, too? “Huh?” I verbally furrowed. “Don’t you think North Michigan Avenue’s downtown? That’s way north of where we live.”

“Well, I guess that’s downtown,” said Matt. “But not exactly.”

I’m being Punk’d, that’s got to be it. “What about the skyscrapers in the West Loop?” I protested. “The office buildings surrounding Marina City in River North? The CTA map’s downtown inset, for crying out loud?”

“There’s a difference between office districts and downtown,” Matt replied. “Let’s just agree to disagree, neither one of us is right or wrong.”

The drunken urban planner inside me had the urge to shake him right then and there. “That’s what you think,” I hissed before stumbling.
__

Yesterday afternoon when Matt and I met up again at Buckingham Fountain, my foot-in-mouth syndrome was far more immediate.

“Can you take our picture?” asked two lovely, young African-American women standing next to the railing of the enormous, iconic fountain.

“Sure,” I replied, taking hold of the camera. Matt stepped aside as I lined up the shot.

And with all due respect to the memory of Kate and Clarence Buckingham, I have no idea what possessed me to utter my next words.

“…What do you want behind you?”

Once again, the Internet has wrought cross-country friendship for Yours Truly. Departing today after a whirlwind Windy City vacation are Seattleites Café Kasey and John Dramatist. Emerald City barista Kasey originally contacted me after visiting a link to my blog. He and actor-boyfriend John were ready for a change of scene and were coming to Chitown to see if the flatland urban shores of Lake Michigan would fit the bill.

I met up with them yesterday after their afternoon at Wrigley Field. “The sun was out when we got to our seats behind third base,” said Kasey. “For about five minutes. Then we froze in the wind and had to buy sweatshirts.”

I could have told them in advance to bring a blanket, but they said they wanted the real Chicago experience. Their newbieness reminded of the last out-of-town couple I helped shepherd around Chicago. In 2006, New Yorkers Adam and Vicky were similarly wide-eyed about this place. (“How do the tall building stay standing without touching each other like they do in New York?” asked Adam as he peered out at the Loop for the first time from the Marina City roofdeck.)

Kasey and John’s happy gaping continued as I led them on a final-day tour of Millennium Park. Somewhere between the Bean and the Plensa fountain, I asked John how Chicago measured up to his expectations.

“This is way better than our New York trip was,” he told me. “New York has a million things to do, but Chicago feels like it gives back to you. There’s a real civic pride that we don’t have back in Seattle.”

“Chicagoans really like where we live,” I replied. “We’re aggressively amiable about it, and we like the folks who come to see our town. We go out of our way for each other, too. That’s the attitude that got me to move here six years ago.”

(Video: Facebook friending brings prospective Chicagoans Kasey and John to town–and their Seattle weather along with them.)

It really is a magical attitude most native Chicagoans downplay, but I have yet to meet a longtime Windy Citizen who gives the lie to this relative civic truism. Not long ago, I visited my old professional stomping grounds at Chicago community-garden land trust NeighborSpace (whose staff and gardeners work their green thumbs off to protect neighborhood gardens all across Chicago from the bulldozer). I was in the neighborhood and wanted to ask head honcho Helpinghand Ben if he had any favorite bloggers to clue me into for my super-spy-secret web project.

He did. In return, he handed me an envelope of seeds. “Do me a favor and blog about this,” he asked. “After all, it’s The Year of the Bean.”

Amazingly enough, he didn’t mean it ironically. A vote among members of One Seed Chicago, a project of NeighborSpace to promote urban community gardening through seed distribution, selected Blue Lake Pole green beans as the giveaway for 2009. More than 100,000 seeds will be mailed around Chicago to interested gardeners. (Mine are in my shoulder bag waiting for me to develop the urge to buy a balcony planter.)

I told Ben it felt like Chicago magic for the two of us to meet up unannounced and both have blogger business to tell each other about.

“It is like magic, look here,” he said, pointing to a chart of planting instructions. “All you do is plant the magic seeds and water them and wait a little while. Then these little ones like I gave you? They grow from bean magic.”

I’d have kicked him in the shin, but he’s the most adorable straight guy I know, so I let the deadpanning continue.

Ben went on. “The round red things? Wait a little while and they’ll grow because of tomato magic. These orange ones over here? They’re my favorite. That’s carrot magic!”

I came to recognize magic as the theme of the entire week of Kasey and John’s visit. I pondered the obvious enchantment between the two lovers as we sat at a table in the backroom of Cellblock on Saturday night.

Something made out of ice slush and vodka at our evening’s first stop, enormous grande-dame gay video bar Sidetrack (“You could break up with someone in here, neither one of you leave, and never run into them again,” said John), and a manly pint of Smithwicks in Cellblock’s front bar help explain why normally Pollyana I was sitting in the back of a wanna-be-1970s gay leather mecca.

On “Furr Party” night.

As I pondered the relative emotional health of myself and the cowhide-clad daddies and boys surrounding our table, I told the Seattle duo I was uncharacteristically tipsy.

“I’m a lightweight too,” said John. “I usually don’t get drunk at bars.”

“That’s not what you told me the other day,” I said. During the obligatory visit to my high-rise Marina City home, the pair recounted how John stood three-sheets-to-the-wind in a Pike Street bar on the eve of his 39th birthday, thinking he’d be alone forever. Out of nowhere comes the eight-years-younger barista and sweeps the unsuspecting birthday boy off his feet.

“Who knew you could find love at the Eagle?” said Kasey.

Rare that may be. Rarer still is finding me on a Boystown bar crawl. At all–much less ’til 2 in the morning and having a good time straight through from entering the glass bar at Sidetrack to heading off the hangover with a wee-hours visit to Halsted street’s late-night lifesaving Taco & Burrito Palace.

“The food here’s cheaper than Seattle,” said Kasey, between mouthfuls of an enormous torta.

“And really good, too,” said John.

Last night, after Millennium Park, as we tucked into hulking slices of Lou Malnati’s deep-dish in River North, I had a feeling Kasey and John were past the point of no return.

Little do they know, it’s the food magic that really sucks in those prospective Chicagoans.

(Click the HQ button for a higher-quality video. RSS subscribers, click here to view the video on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

Recently, I was reminded that I’m alive when an unexpected event stopped my mind long enough to realize the fact. Last July, on the belated third anniversary of CARLESS, I described my spiritual side, and the Journey to and through Chicago that woke me up to it.

Of course, anyone who’s ever gained an iota of clarity about anything will tell you how easy it is to lose focus again. I hadn’t realized how much of a sleepwalker I’d become again until a friend pointed it out indirectly last week.

That’s a shame. Those who know me know the terror I can be when I fall off my cushion. My middle masthead icon is meditating (I know, I can’t believe you didn’t see it, either) in order to remind me of the overwhelming, demanding, judgmental, and just plain bitchy sides of me that come out when I stop keeping an eye on them and bark at friends, co-workers, and–as regular readers well know–blog subjects. [Ed. note: this is a reference to the masthead used on Chicago Carless from July 2008 until January 2010.]

They sent my friend running for a time-out of monumental proportions. It was an overdue signal that my friends’ lives are their own to lead, and a reminder that my duty to them and to all beings is simply to be here for them, unconditionally.

That’s the Buddhist concept of metta, or lovingkindness (best described in Sharon Salzberg’s seminal 1995 book,  Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness). Not the love of grasping desire or craving for transitory pleasures, metta instead is love simply because we are divine if confused beings in a divine world, and deserving of the care of others by dint of that alone.

(Video: We live life as we believe it to be. Credit: linepie2–RSS subscribers follow link to view.)

Metta never seeks anything in return, and resides nowhere outside of us. It is cultivated from within, and is a powerful tool to rely on at those moments when you teeter towards making an enemy out of a friend simply because they don’t live up to your unfair expectations of them.

It’s what allows a brave heart to open wide and embrace happiness and sadness without placing blame or pretending that previous joy has suddenly ceased to have meaning merely because of circumstance.

I spoke indirectly of metta when I disclosed my spiritual worldview last year. Among others, I shared these longstanding beliefs:

• That love and compassion are the driving forces of the Universe;
• That true happiness, security, and well-being come from within; and
• That we as humans have a limitless ability–and responsibility–to allow love, compassion, joy, happiness, and peace to course through our lives and into the lives of those around us.

More immediately, metta is among the vows I make every morning during meditation–or, of course, used to make. As I strive to return to my seat, it is worth noting the key promises I had forgotten:

• I vow to see my patterns and do something different.
• I vow to allow others to learn their own lessons in their own time.
• I vow to avoid reacting in anger and causing harm.
• I vow to cultivate compassion and lovingkindness.
• I vow never to throw anyone out of my heart.
• Instead, I vow to allow joy.

Most of all, though, I vow to remember. For myself, for my friend, and for my world.

I seriously need a better alarm clock.

(Photo: I’d like some cream with that…)

Today, I’m the featured guest on Chicago’s homegrown Feast of Fools podcast, the most popular LGBT-themed daily talk show on the planet. Wonder twin powers, activate! Form of: a giddy gay blogger!

Last week, I almost fell off my seat when FoF hosts Fausto Fernós and Marc Felion emailed me an invitation to be on the show. I’m a regular listener to the always hysterical, often touching roundtable discussion program the pair have produced to wide acclaim out of their north-side Chicago home studio since 2005.

However, I’m no RuPaul. Or Kathy Griffin. Or Margaret Cho. Or Alpana Singh. Or Varla Jean Merman. Or one of any number of local and national abject diva luminaries of fabulosity that Fernós and Felion regularly fête on the show. So color me happily astonished and grateful for the opportunity to meet two of my blogosphere heroes in person and sit behind their magic microphone.

Yes, friends, that’s the sound of your favorite crabapple blogger profusely gushing.

I had an awesome time on their “Gay Fun Show”, which recorded Sunday night for debut Monday morning. The FoF pair quizzed me on popular topics from CHICAGO CARLESS, including the Intelligentsia coffee-controversy-that-wouldn’t-die, my struggle with ADD, adventures in gay speed dating, and meeting the only man who ever wanted to dance with me.

In particular, Fernós and Felion questioned me at length about Chicagoist’s flaming reaction to my criticism of Intelligentsia’s recent price increases. I’d like to say that in response I provided some thoughtful commentary regarding that oh-so-wildly waggish, municipally monickered news blog and its right to express an opinion, no matter how inflammatory.

However, regular readers wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, instead, I took off my earrings, put down my purse, slapped Chicagoist’s shit, and told the bitch-ass to get the fuck up out my grill.

And regular readers won’t be disappointed, either. Fasten your seatbelts, folks.

[To hear the rest of my caffeinated comments, visit the Feast of Fools interview page to download or live-stream the show, or subscribe in iTunes.]

(Photo: Cincinnati Jamie on the prowl.)

When Cincinnati Jamie pulled up in front of the Hilton one evening in October with a spent Austrian airline pilot in the passenger seat, I tried to be demure. As he got out of the car, I told Herr Pilot, “When I blog about this, I promise only to refer to you as number three.”

I had walked across my downtown Chicago neighborhood to meet Jamie for a ride up to Lincoln Square to satiate a mutual Queen City chili fix. I knew well it wasn’t the only satiating going on that day.

“My word, can you at least try to be a bit more taciturn next time?” pleaded Jamie as we pulled away down Wacker. “He didn’t know there was already a number one and two.”

“Weren’t the wet sheets a tip-off?”

“Look, Michael, let me have this. I’m a big guy; it’s not as easy for me as it is for you thin boys. And after all, it’s the only regular aerobic activity that I get…you want to try for number four?”

I demurred.

My late-afternoon lead-up to our chili run was no less lustful. An hour before, online acquaintance Vanity Vince recounted in great detail his similar attempt to conquer Chicago’s gay dating scene in a single day.

“They’re all lined up right now: one, two, three, four,” he said with some glee. “All over the city. Some are dinner, others are coffee. I’m giving myself an hour to run between each one.”

“What if you hit it off with one of them?” I asked.

“They can have an extra half-an-hour and then I’ll just tell the taxi to step on it.”

“Where are you starting?”

“Lakeview, then Lincoln Square, then Lincoln Park, then Uptown.”

“Why didn’t you schedule all your lakefront dates back to back?”

“Three dates in a row practically in the same neighborhood? Don’t you think that’s a little gauche?”

I’ve often wondered whether my own love life would go more smoothly if I had that speed-dating gene seemingly so common in the gay community. Line ‘em all up, check their teeth, pat their rump, and trot them around for a trial run, one by one. Like race horses, only with condoms and better shoes.

I’m just not wired that way. I’m the kind of guy who finds it sexier to learn what’s in a guy’s head and heart before I find out what’s in his boxer-brief Calvins. I blame my mother, she always told me being a good boy was a virtue. Unfortunately, sex on the first date is what sells in the homosphere. And by date, I mean booty call.

Not that I’m above a good romp in the designer Egyptian cotton sheets. A listen to my first (and so far, last) podcast will learn you the details about my first (and so far, second) post-heartbreak summer of love. And by summer of love, I mean summer of booty calls.

But as any lovelorn queer will tell you, booty calls don’t tend to be followed up by follow-up calls. Experience shows if you’re looking for Mr. Right in the gay community, you’re not going to get far if you keep turning him into Mr. Right Now.

It’s not just Jamie and Vince. Most of my gay male friends seem to think mutual masturbation and simultaneous climax are the hallmarks of a good first date.

I think it’s a guy thing more than anything else. Straight or gay, let’s face it, in the timeless words of RuPaul: mens are dogs. The gay community even has a joke about it:

What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul.

What does a gay man bring on a second date? What’s a second date?

Actually, downtown friend Robert to Trot does seem to have a few of those. Probably the randiest gay man I’ve ever met, I’ve often wondered how he manages it.

“Oh, honey, I don’t expect to find a husband anymore anyway,” he confided during a recent visit to his downtown digs. “I’ve just shifted my definition of date a little further south, if you get my drift. Here let me show you…”

As Robert walked toward his bathroom, my inner pencil immediately traced an escape route to his front door.

He reached under his vanity and pulled out a box of scary. “This is my freezer bag of Nair–in three scents mind you, and this is my freezer bag of Rid, you know, in case of emergency.”

“You’re kidding.” I doubt enough air came up my windpipe for him to hear my reply.

“And this is my Cipro. There’s three guys before Monday, so I half-expect I may catch something bacterial and I just want to be prepared.”

Mom also always told me to think before I speak. That day at Robert’s, I finally took her advice. I paused and considered an appropriate response.

“Dude, I’m never using anything made out of cloth in your apartment again.”

No, the gay speed-dating life definitely isn’t for me. So I keep plugging away, online and off, trying to be flexible in my own personal husband-hunting criteria. But not overly permissive. Dogs? Kids? Expunged records? Bring ‘em on. You’re 40, you live at home, and you’re still in the closet? Next!

I wish I was joking about that last one. He honestly couldn’t understand why I didn’t think he was a catch. It’s almost enough to make me consider dating women.

As if I’d share a closet.

(Photo: I wish I had his equanimity.)

[A warm welcome today to my new visitors from StumbleUpon!]

One of the hardest things for anyone with Attention Deficit Disorder like me to do is acknowledge a difference of opinion. Not because we’re too wrapped up in our own opinions to notice (although there is a variant of ADD that elicits a knee-jerk opposition to the input of others).

More likely, we recognize someone else’s potentially dearly held alternative opinion. But by the time that sinks in, our focus is often off and running after some other, shinier tangent. We don’t mean to run roughshod over the requests, suggestions, and outright protests of our friends and loved ones. But a lot of the time, that’s what we do without realizing it.

That’s not exactly true. Usually we figure out what we’ve done a few hours–or days–later. After our miffed BFF or snubbed significant other has stewed for awhile and then (from our ADD perspective) unexpectedly let us have it. In most cases with verbal fits, although from time to time airborne fruit and/or furniture have been known to be involved.

If I had a nickel for the number of times numerous ex-boyfriends accused me of throwing to the wind their carefully worded suggestions, intensifying complaints, or screamingly angry death-match-level protests, I’d be writing this Chicago blog from a renovated two-bedroom atop the Hancock with a Lake Shore Drive vista, not a ghetto-rific studio halfway up the low-rent, blocked-view side of Marina City.

It’s enough to make an ADDer yearn for a gated community full of short-attention-spanned compadres. A welcoming place of sanctuary where every forgotten appointment, lost set of keys, and accidentally ignored promise or protest would be met with a sly grin and a knowing nod. A Whoville of sorts–only one where half the community would have to hum the Christmas Day lyrics around the Who tree because they never manage to remember the words.

If only our friends and lovers could roll out the same patience we ADDers have to unfurl for them. Talk slower? Write things down? What do you mean we said that already? So what? We’re just trying to make a point! You understand us, don’t you? You are aware our behavior is due to uncommon neurological pathways in our brains and not because we don’t “try hard enough,” right? Didn’t you know all of this came with the territory when you signed on to have an ADDer in your life?

Well, ok. Maybe you didn’t. But if you really care about us like you say you do, how about throwing us some slack? Do you really think your ADD loved one is trying to drive you up a wall intentionally? Especially considering how annoying it is from our perspective to have to hear all the time how we are quite possibly engaging in a nefarious plot bankrolled by big pharma to force you into therapy and a high daily dose of overly expensive anti-anxiety medication?

Actually, sometimes we do goad you just for sport, but in our defense, half the time we think you deserve it, too. If only for your lack of patience with us.

As with all things, there are two sides to every story. In any difference of perspective between people, no one has a license to claim theirs is the right one. All opinions are valid ones. I think that’s what gets ADDers and their loved ones into battle in the first place.

The Buddha Dharma would say one of the surest ways to get yourself in trouble with anyone is to go around defending your own opinion. In a perfect world, we’d all be secure enough in our own viewpoints that we wouldn’t feel a need to have them validated by others. (You did remember I’m a Buddhist, didn’t you?)

This is especially key advice for ADDers and anyone in their collateral damage zone. If every ADDer could just take it for granted that when their loved ones tell them they’ve forgotten to do something–like listen, especially–it’s the truth, and if every blast-zone denizen in their lives could get it through their heads that their beloved ADDers really don’t mean anything by their forgetfulness, there would be many fewer tumblers of eggnog flying across living rooms this Holiday season.

My plan–at least through New Year’s or as long as I remember, whichever period expires first–is to do likewise. Actually, it’s always been my plan to apply this particular Dharma to my personal affairs. At all costs. It’s amazing how often I forget to do so.

But it’s not surprising. I am an ADDer after all. And if you want to hang with me, it’s best to school yourself on the lay of the land. You’ll understand that in the heat of the moment I’ll likely be little help in that regard, so you better do your homework.

On behalf of my fellow ADDers, we promise to do our best to take our loved ones at their word and defuse disastrous differences of opinion before they arise. But we warn you, you better be as diligent in your efforts as we. Otherwise, next time you find yourself on the receiving end of our annoyingly forgetful behavior, it might be on purpose.

That might not be the Dharmic thing for us to do, but hey, no one’s perfect.