At a friend’s home, I picked up a little book by Michael Mirdad called You’re Not Going Crazy, You’re Just Waking Up: The Five Stages of the Soul Transformation Process and began to flip through it. I had to stop flipping because my friend and I were having a conversation, but I didn’t want to put the book down.

For any organization to thrive, teams need to work together effectively. Google has done extensive research into the skills and character traits of a “dream team.”

During times of transition, I often think of the life cycle of the butterfly. A butterfly lays an egg. The egg hatches into a caterpillar. The caterpillar eats and grows bigger, then spins itself a cocoon. Sometime later, the cocoon breaks open and what emerges is a butterfly. Magical!

“I stopped watching the news,” a friend said, “because it was so scary and depressing. But I want to be informed. Lately I’ve been watching documentaries. I thought they would be more objective and neutral and not upset me so much. But after a weekend of watching documentaries, learning more about how we’re running out of water, and horrible things happening all around the world, I’m left thinking the world really is a terrible place.”

This friend is one of the sunniest people I know – usually.

One of my favourite people recently confided in me, “I was wearing my Bat Woman underwear!” We both started to laugh.

She had a difficult meeting with the most senior person in her workplace. In addition to all the other ways she prepared for the meeting, her secret weapon was Bat Woman underwear.

Over the weekend I had the great joy of attending the musical My Fair Lady. It was presented by the Churchmice Players, an amateur theatre group in my home town of Camrose, Alberta. It was a fabulous evening on so many levels, starting with I like George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion on which the musical is based.

So there I was, minding my own business, in a completely neutral state of mind, walking down a shopping mall to do some errands.

I began to feel anxious. I noticed the knot in my stomach, a sense of uneasiness, slower shallow breathing. I could think of several things to be anxious about, but it didn’t seem like any of them were what the anxiety was about. I was puzzled. And of course, that made me more anxious.

When I still had teenagers living at home, I used to watch the news regularly. As I watched, I would do a running rant. I’d talk back to the announcer about how useless a story was. I’d pontificate about what the government should be doing. I’d argue with people who were interviewed. I’d go on about how appalling a certain situation was.

Whenever I think about Valentine’s Day, and expressing love, I remember an interview in which author Toni Morrison talked about how we express love to children.

Groundhog Day was earlier this week and it reminded me of two things: a childhood reaction and a movie. I didn’t expect the places that Groundhog Day took me.