Therefore it is critical to break habitual reactions that serve as kindling for the fire of anger and other negative emotions. Although they accurately delineate the problem, most “anger management” courses fall short of long term efficacy because they do not address the Tonal in the entirety of its interdependent parts.

The Heart

Your emotions, ruled by the Heart dimension of the Tonal, dictate your emotional reactions to a situation. If you are upset you’re in essence saying to yourself, “This situation is not OK, I must do something.” Unfortunately, the “something” that you do is directed outward. Instead, it needs to be directed inward: “I must do something about me.” First and foremost, you need to think of yourself and what you’re feeling – and Why you’re feeling it.

Habitual reactions serve as kindling to the fire of anger – and it’s another thing to watch out for when negative emotions arise. More often than not, a negative reaction to a situation or your immediate circumstances can lead to a type of sense memory, triggered by other times you’ve felt this way. What started out as a small spark of anger quickly erupts into dangerous, powerful flames of rage that frankly do nothing but exacerbate your problem (the anger thus provoking the situation). So, it’s important to recognize the emotion you’re feeling, and work to isolate it from whatever is going on in this moment. It’s not the time for a trip down Bad Memory Lane.

Time is on your side when dealing with negative emotions, whether at work or at home. If you tend to react instantly to vent your anger, whenever you feel this way it should set off a kind of “auto-timer” in your mind of 15 minutes or more. Vow to yourself not to react outwardly – in email, text, on the phone or in person – for at least 15 minutes. If at the end of your “time-out” period you still feel that a response to those involved is necessary, then go ahead – civilly.

The Mind

The phrase “getting up on the wrong side of the bed” may seem amusing to some, but it’s a truth that resonates with everyone who’s had a bad day.

Bad days may not start out bad; but as soon as something “bad” happens, it’s usually impossible to stop the tailspin. Before too long, it seems as though the entire universe is conspiring against you, and even the simplest of tasks are monumentally frustrating. However, this can be stopped dead in its tracks – which should be a welcome relief to anyone who’s been in this situation.

Instead of placing yourself in the center of events, take a moment to think of the situation from another point of view. For example, let’s say something at work triggered your angry impulses. Things go downhill from there, and now you’re in your car on the way home and traffic is a mess.

You’ve been stuck on the freeway for half an hour. Your blood is starting to boil over. There’s nothing good on the radio. You’re honking your horn and screaming at those who aren’t moving quickly enough. Everyone’s merging into one lane, people start trying to get ahead on the shoulder, and there goes the whole ballgame.

Up ahead you see the point where the knot of traffic is clear. What’s the hold-up? An idiot got into an accident. Do they just give out licenses these days? You glare at “the moron” as you inch your way past, and by the time you get home it’s open season on your family as you vent the rage from your day.

But, what if you thought for a moment about “that moron” in the accident? How shaken up she must be. How her day is so much worse than yours. Or maybe you think about how your teenage son was recently in an accident, and how you thanked God he was not hurt?

In short: The world does not revolve around you and your problems. Once you understand this and are aware of it at these vulnerable moments, you may find your anger dissipates rapidly.

Another bad Mind habit we fall into is to think that we are powerless to change our ways. Often, people will say, “I’m just like my father – my father always got angry.” Give up hope of a better past! Realize that just because your father was miserable doesn’t meant you have to be. Just because everyone around him suffered, doesn’t mean everyone around you has to now!

The Body

Take every possible precaution not to manifest your anger physically in a way that harms yourself or others. When you get angry, your adrenaline is activated (that’s why your blood pressure rises) – and for some, that means some sort of physical release is necessary. Always choose flight over fight. Take a walk.

Another way people try to calm down is by having a drink. Again, unfortunately, for too many this turns into more drinks, which turns into fights, sloppy declarations, and other reactions to the problem that helps exactly no one involved – least of all, yourself.

Finally, the Body can have strong physiological reactions to anger. If the psychological benefits of lowering your anger levels is not an incentive for you to do so, then get a full checkup from your doctor. You may find that your chronic anger has manifested itself in ways that are literally killing you.

The flip side of the physiological aspect of anger is that your body may be causing your reactions. If you often find yourself unable to control your angry impulses, it may be due to a chemical imbalance in your body. Ask your doctor to check your thyroid, estrogen, testosterone and other organ systems. Chronic heartburn or irritability can be a cause as well as be a symptom of negativity.

The Soul

There’s a bit of hyperbole that many use when describing how a negative event affected them: “I died a little inside.” When it comes to how anger can affect your Soul, it’s 100 percent true.

Think for a moment: How is your anger affecting your Soul? How many people have died a little inside as a result of your outbursts? How many friendships and relationships have died because of your anger? When later you realize what you must seem like to others who witness your rage, exactly how much of your Soul dies a little of shame?

If this self-inflicted punishment were a one-time thing – if you simply noted your mistake and moved on, having once been guilty but now truly wiser – a little guilt can go a long way. The problem comes when this kind of self-punishment becomes a habit. A “mind rut” of constant self-deprecation can be harmful, as it tends to stick around long after it’s served its usefulness.

If in the process of self-punishment for guilt you turn to obsessive thoughts, another problem may arise: You may begin to believe your thoughts and think your punishing self-appraisal is the way things really are. You can actually change your reality – for the worse.

These mind tricks may be why cultures and religions have developed rituals, procedures and mechanisms for sending guilt packing. In some cases, you go to a priest who tells you to recite a set of prayers. In others there are rituals for apologizing or external demonstrations of regret. The point is that once “fixed,” the guilt is ended in the person’s mind.

I know a man who carefully arranged a canoe trip with his 6- and 7-year-old sons to help them deal with the pain of their parents’ divorce. Although they spent three perfectly idyllic days together as a trio, just for a moment he lost his temper with the younger child (he and his brother were horsing around, the way boys do at that age).

To this day, that father has never been able to forgive himself for his angry and hurtful outburst. It is the only thing he can remember, emotionally, about the trip. The two nights and three days simply recede into a blurry background as the memory of the wounded look of his younger boy invariably returns to break the father’s heart each and every time.

The difference between guilt and shame is an interesting one. Guilt is a kind of fear of punishment. Shame is a fear of ostracism (e.g., The Scarlet Letter).

Shame is usually feared more. Having shame is worse than having regret or remorse. Even after guilt is gone, shame can remain.

I once asked a 7-year-old boy the difference between guilt and shame. He told me without even a hint of a pause, and I have never forgotten what he said:

“You can’t fix shame.”

For the ancients, a state of grace was being in accord with The Way, Buddha, nature, Atman, What Is. In the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), it would be called walking with God, being filled by the Holy Spirit or being in communion with Christ. In this state there is no conflict between the heart, mind, body and soul; or, if there is a conflict, it is apparent, external and inconsequential. The observer, the true self, sees reality just as it is. In this state there is a sense of awe, wonder, gratitude, and boundlessness. The conflict is minuscule in comparison.

Walking in light is appropriate in that reality takes on a luminous quality. There is also a certain lightness – many things that seemed so serious, heavy, dark, foreboding, or scary are no longer seen this way. Instead, there is infinite possibility and reality – and there is nothing to be afraid of.

At the same time there is also an extraordinary simplicity. Everything just is, as it always has been and always will be. In this way life itself is analogous to a dream. Awakening from the sleeping dream and the limits of the dream seem small compared to life itself. There is a sense of a much larger reality than what we were able to imagine during our dream state.

When we awaken into reality – true reality – we realize that separation is an illusion; nothing exists independently, nothing real is born or dies, and all of our pain, worries, fears, and suffering come from the fact that we are looking at it from the small perspective of our personal (egoic) self.

Once released from the small self, the true self manifests as equal to infinite reality – as far as the human mind can fathom.

What is remarkable here is the delight, the universality and uncontrived nature of this simple scene. But something miraculous occurs while we laugh and play with an infant.

Two humans make a connection – they attune with one another – and their nervous systems become locked in a type of dance that is one of the most extraordinary processes in all of nature. The infant’s brain is making thousands of new connections to the billions of connections it will need for later life. He is learning to read emotions from the facial expressions of others; to distinguish sounds that eventually will become words; that the world is not static but responsive; that the world cares about him, and that he can be an active agent in getting the world to respond to him. He is learning to speak, to hear, to understand, to predict, to anticipate, to realize that he is a source of delight, and that he can elicit delight in those with whom he is attuned.

Attunement is one of the great mysteries, for scientists and mystics alike, behind the extraordinary phenomena of human life. In it our boundaries dissolve; we leave our individual egos aside; the world goes away and we are left dancing freely in a state of grace that is as close to beatific as many of us will ever get.

Those who have fallen in love know this state well. The rest of the world drops away and in the lovers’ embrace, nothing else exists but the two that have now become one, formed in a dance of Attunement.

I was once fortunate enough to have great seats for an opera written by Phillip Glass, just above where the strings were placed. Toward the climax of the opera, as the music began to swell in intensity, volume, complexity and passion I watched transfixed as the musicians focused intently on their sheet music and concentrated all of their being into playing this extraordinarily difficult and powerful movement in harmony and absolute precision with one another. The music became more passionate as it exploded after a long slow climb of crescendo into a racing fury of notes demanding absolute skill, confidence, concentration, and artistry.

And then I saw an example of Attunement I will never forget: Two cellists, sitting erect in their starched, stiff black tuxedos, absorbed fixedly in their sheet music as they flawlessly executed what must have been some of the most demanding technical material of the season. Their eyes were locked onto their scores and their hands moved furiously until – without warning, cue or pause – at the exact same instant, they both looked up and made eye contact with one another. With the slightest of smiles, their most subtle of expressions said to one another:

“This is why we are here. This is why we do what we do. This is what we are and there is no greater thing to be than a cellist in this place, at this moment. We are here together and each of us knows, without a word or even a conscious thought, that in this endeavor we have become as one with each other, the music, its composer, our craft and our art.”

Their glance lasted a fraction of a second, but that was all it took. In their shared understanding they dissolved into a unified being greater than their respective selves. They were attuned and through that Attunement, they brought the work of the composer and the souls of the audience together to soar with them into a space beyond the physical confines of the symphony hall.

Look around you. You will see Attunement, too, every day.

The point here is not necessarily to help you stop smoking (although it will help if you do want to quit); the point is that you begin to be able to observe the differences between the four parts of your Tonal as they speak simultaneously.

Another example might be whether or not to eat dessert. Eating dessert is not the issue here; the question is, can you observe the different parts of your mind, heart, body and soul as they struggle to determine your behavior? By simply observing your impulses, you accomplish two things: One, you realize that they are not you; and second, you begin to gain mastery over them.

As you grow more and more adept at recognizing these different voices, you become the conductor rather than just one of the instruments being played. The potential of this personal power cannot be overstated and has applications in many aspects of life from modulation of your own moods to success in your relationships, performance at work, true creativity, effectiveness and joy.

There was a palpable tension underneath the surface; past experience had taught all three women how quickly this could turn into conflict, usually over perceived criticism or hurt feelings because things were not done “just so” – that is, as they always had been, and how they always should be.

But, the two older women were careful not to spill their wine or to appear too judgmental of the young mother as she carefully tried to assume the role that had been passed down to her.

Although she tried to hide it, Donna was nervous. The ham had to go in the oven; the glaze was homemade; the yams still were not the perfect consistency; the green beans must be just so: not too crispy, but not limp, with just the exact amount of crunch. She worked with a formal, almost ceremonial efficiency while the two older women looked on.

As Donna hoisted the ham onto a wooden carving block and proceeded, carefully and expertly, to carve off exactly an inch and a half from each end, Grandmamma broke the silence and Sally’s already fragile confidence.

“Why on earth did you do that, dear?”

Donna could feel the blood begin to rise to her face. “Because this is how Mom always did it,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders and feeling foolish.

“That is exactly how you taught me, Mother!” Her mother, blessedly, came to Donna’s defense.

“I did?” asked Grandmamma, incredulous.

Now mother and daughter both chimed in. “Every year!”

Donna watched as her mother and her grandmother turned the question – and the implicit accusation – on each other. They stared for a few moments, trying desperately to recall the moment, years ago, in which this strange cooking ritual had been passed down.

Then Grandmamma started to laugh. She laughed so hard she almost wet her pants! She sputtered and spilled her wine. She had to hold onto the counter to keep from falling down to the floor, practically choking, trying to catch her breath.

Finally, she managed to sputter out:

“I cut… I cut the ends off… off the ham… because my pan was too small!”

Somehow it came out that I was a psychiatrist, and so did story of her life. “I am so fragmented, I feel overwhelmed all the time, my mind is scattered, I can’t focus, my marriage fell apart, I’m having problems at work. I focus on a million things at once and I can’t seem to get anything done. Do you think I need medication?”

The video line inched forward.

Rosie was the mother of two girls aged four and six, and had the harried look of an American mom with way too much to do and too little time in which to do it. She worked full-time both at home and at a high-tech company, where she worked as a low-level administrative assistant. Rosie was not a wealthy woman, and so she was limited to discount, thrift, and Goodwill stores to find raincoats for her two little girls.

Halloween came on a Friday that year. She did not have a lot of time, but nothing in the world meant more to her than her daughters and she would do anything and everything for their happiness and well-being. On this day, that meant finding two raincoats in a dense urban area where demand was high, supply was low, and parents were desperate.

After a morning of phone calls, pleading, threatening, and the unapologetic use of friends, family and sales people, she found what she was looking for. She quickly made an excuse to leave work early for lunch and drove across town to collect her treasure at a Ross discount store half an hour from where she worked. She cajoled a salesman over the phone to hold the raincoats for her. (Those of you who are familiar with Ross know that’s the equivalent of parting the Red Sea.)

With single-minded purpose clarity and determination – with the alignment of her heart, mind, body and soul – Rosie had done the next to impossible: She found two matching raincoats for her children on the same day every parent in California was trying to do the same thing. She was a paragon of purpose.

She told me this while also telling me how scattered, fragmented, overwhelmed, and the unfocused she was. Curious about the discrepancy, I explained the notion of the Tonal – the alignment of heart, mind, body and soul – and asked her to describe how well she was aligned internally. Without a moment’s hesitation, she signaled with the familiar gesture of left and right index fingers pointing toward each other but in opposite directions.

“I’m like this.”

I responded that she seemed pretty aligned when it came to getting her girls what they needed, to which she agreed. “But it’s the rest of my life that makes me miserable.”

I asked her what it was that she wanted in life, and she replied she wanted to feel peaceful and happy.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Absolutely!”

“What if you were to pursue peace of mind the way you win after your girls’ raincoats?”

Immediately, she got it. The reason she couldn’t find peace in her life was because she was not clear about her purpose – except when it came to raising her children. Everywhere else she was ambivalent and pointed in different directions.

Her eyes widened as she considered the possibilities. “Do you mean if I were to pursue peace in my life the way I pursued my girls’ raincoats, I would find it?”

I could honestly say that if she were to pursue peace as a goal with the determination and single-mindedness that characterized her search for raincoats, she would indeed find it. When it came to her girls, her Tonal was in perfect alignment. When she was clear about what she wanted or needed, and determined to have it, she was quite capable of making it happen.

She did not need medication. She needed clarity about what she wanted from life. Rosie suffered needlessly from a lack of purpose in most of the things she did. She could see immediately how, when it came to her children, her clarity about her priorities made any deficit of attention vanish.

She reached the counter, rented her DVDs and turned around with a smile.

“You are so right,” she said, and with that Rosie turned and walked out of the store with the extraordinary poise that had been in her all along.

Every year, when Joan visits her closest, dearest girlfriend, she is consumed with a jealously so overwhelming that her week is ruined. Joan’s friend is married to a NASCAR driver and lives in an exclusive part of Santa Barbara. Although Joan’s friend’s husband is not particularly attractive or kind to his wife, he is a great father and, according to Joan, “They have so much!” When asked what she means, Joan can only say helplessly, “They have so many…things!”

When she told me this, I was taken aback. Joan is not a superficial woman. She is in her late thirties, old enough and experienced enough to know the limitations of this approach to life. In fact, she knows it so well that she spends the two weeks prior to her visits getting ready by “telling myself how much I have to be grateful for” and how “things are just things.” She knows her suffering is silly, but she cannot seem to free herself from it.

We have all seen this so many times – maybe in ourselves, maybe in others. Envy is considered one of the seven deadly sins, but why does it exist at all?

They have been best friends since elementary school, when they were classmates together in the same middle-class neighborhood. They grew up together, and stayed together emotionally; but although they remain close, Joan describes their lives as having grown apart. She lifts her hands in a large V to show me the trajectory of their lives, ever more distant from each other.

“She moved on and I stayed there, in our hometown. I know it’s silly, and she’s still a great person, but I cannot stand to be in her beautiful home, with the swimming pool and all of those wonderful things that she owns. For two weeks before each visit I try to prepare myself, and for two weeks after each visit I try to repair myself, but the feeling just won’t go away. And I hate myself for it. I know I only have myself to blame for my feelings. There is so much I have to be grateful for…but the feelings eat me up inside!”

“Let them,” I suggested. “Stop fighting them. Don’t run. Don’t fight. Don’t struggle. Just look at them, the next time you get a chance. Where do those feelings exist?”

“Inside me. I can feel them in my body,” she said, grimacing as she passed her hand over her stomach and chest.

“These feelings are your friends,” I contradicted, “however much they appear to be the opposite. Treat them like your friends. Invite them in. In fact, welcome them. They’re trying to tell you something that you need to know.”

For the next few months, she did as I told her. She didn’t fight, run, or repress. Instead, she looked at those painful feelings and realized that they were only ideas in her mind, nothing more. If she left them alone, they went away on their own. By just being with them, she made friends with her mind and, through passive non-resistance, took away the power of these thoughts of jealousy.

No big news there…but then something extraordinary happened. Joan realized that it wasn’t actually her friend’s “things” that she coveted. Instead, those feelings masked something much more vital.

You see, Joan’s friend had a child – a baby boy. Joan and her husband had always planned to start a family together but they had put it off, over and over again, waiting for the “right time,” when life would be settled and stable and secure. But life is never totally settled and stable and secure, and Joan realized that it was her friend’s status as a mother that she truly envied. When Joan stepped away from the war that her mind had created within herself, she discovered a simple but primal truth: she wanted a child.

She became calmer, at peace with herself. From a genuine, deep, aligned place within herself, she brought up the issue with her husband, who himself had begun feeling that he was ready to move on to the next phase of their life together.

Joan’s false self was not her enemy. Had she declared war on herself, that’s all she would have had – a war in which one false self battled another over how things “should be.” One set of thoughts battling another set of thoughts. When she quieted down and then paid attention, Joan realized that she was not her thoughts but something deeper, richer and more profound than thoughts can ever be.

By simply being with her envy, by acting without resistance or contention, Joan had naturally grown into the place she needed to be in order to continue to evolve. Envy had helped her move from a false and petty self to the wonderful loving mother she was to become.

My guide and I waited respectfully at the entrance of his large hut without speaking. It seemed like a very long time before he abruptly turned around. My heart practically leapt out of my chest with terror when I saw his menacing necklace of small skulls, feathers, human hair and what appeared to be the teeth of large jungle cats.

I had been told there were headhunters in the region. As a Norte Americano medical student, I didn’t want my head adorning a warrior’s chest; I was relieved upon second glance to see that the skulls were those of birds. I was so startled by his necklace, however, that I was still shaking when I finally looked up at his cragged face.

Never before or since have I seen eyes like his. They were pitch black, shining like onyx. They were deeply set in his ancient face and seemed to open into infinity. I was still scared and unsure of his intentions, and searched those eyes for a sign. He gazed at me, seeming to read my thoughts, and gestured for me to follow him.

Without a word, he took me to a hut on the other side of the clearing and signaled for my guide to wait. He walked in front of me and, free from his intense stare, I started to get some of my fear under control, I noticed his gait. He walks like a cat, I said to myself. The grace and certainty with which he moved was as striking as his presence, his eyes and his silence.

No words had been exchanged, and yet he was guiding me as if he already knew very well; not only who I was, but also how I had come to this moment in which the two of us were together. We seemed to be connected in some way that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Inside the hut, he stood patiently while my eyes to adjust to the dark interior. On the far wall I could finally see a single straw cot raised four or five feet from the ground. On it lay a man with his back to us, facing the wall. He didn’t move. He breathed slowly, deeply. He was well developed and well nourished. He was well hydrated. I could see a steady pulse in the arteries of his neck.

Of course! This mysterious curandero was asking for my opinion. I was on clinical rounds! Now we were doing something I could relate to. I was brought back to my time at medical school, following my professors around to see their patients. Immediately, I fell into the familiar role of fellow doctor and felt at ease.

Still without a word having been exchanged, we walked back to the first hut and to my translator and guide. The curandero turned to my guide and said a few words in his native language. “What do you think?” he had asked.

Eagerly, I offered my prognosis. The patient was young, healthy, well developed, breathing well with a strong pulse: “He should be fine,” I said, looking at my hands as if notes were written on them.

I looked up into those infinitely black, incredibly peaceful eyes and heard a voice inside my head saying, No.

I don’t think it occurred to me that he had never actually spoken the word, No. My words stumbled over each other as I tried to explain my medical opinion, but I began to lose myself in his eyes that now seemed somehow connected or locked into mine. What was happening? What do you mean? Let me examine him further! He is going to be fine – I will show you!

Without shaking his head or saying a word, the shaman once again spoke inside my head: No, he is going to die.

In my years around doctors, hospitals clinics, emergency rooms, operating rooms and all else involved in the training of a modern doctor, I have never felt such calm certainty: He is going to die.

“But why?” I blurted out in Spanish.

I heard the translator as I fell back into the sea of the shaman’s eyes: “Because the signs say so.”

This was a revelation to me. Within the span of a few seconds, a thousand thoughts ran through my head: Signs from where? Was this like Voodoo? Why had I been brought here if the shaman was resigned to that man’s fate? Wasn’t there something we could do? Would this witch doctor, whom I still was scared of and still did not entirely trust, blame me? Was I one of the signs? And did he really speak inside my head, without making a sound?

There I was, a highly skilled doctor in the middle of the jungle with a man who could read my mind and insert his own thoughts as well. He probably had followed my entire train of thought just then. I gathered myself and through the translator this time – a mode of conversing I found much less terrifying than telepathy – I learned more about the patient.

The sign that made his death a foregone conclusion was that he had turned to face the wall. It was as maddeningly simple as that. No tests, blood samples, or highly advanced machinery would have brought about the same level of certainty to this shaman or, at this point, to me as well.

What the medicine man in the jungle had taught me were two very important things. The first was that telepathy was not just a myth – I had experienced it myself, and although I had no clinical explanation for it, I knew it as well as I know my name that we had communicated without using words.

The second – and one I think of to this day as I treat my patients – is that there are signs that can’t be found in a diagnostic manual or test results that indicate the status of a patient. It’s changed the way I observe my patients, and it has honed my sensitivity to their symptoms – both the ones they describe, and the ones they don’t even know they’re showing.

The children are crazed with excitement, hunger, and full bladders. In various states of undress from layers of ski clothes, they scatter towards fulfillment of whatever bodily need is the most pressing. Eventually, however, they all end up where I was standing – in line at the Burger King counter.

Except it wasn’t a line. It was a swarm of seething parents and kids.

Kids were clomping around in ski boots they couldn’t bear to take off. Hats and gloves were dropping everywhere. Parents frantically and fruitlessly were trying to keep track of their kids and their kids’ friends and two gloves and ski cap for each of them. They tried to keep their place in line and collect food preferences for the hungry, hot, sweaty, noisy part of the crowd that belonged to them.

Common courtesy was the first victim of this near-riot. Decorum and self-control followed. The harried adults went from bemused to irritated to outright out-of-control enraged.

It may be accurately described as an angry mob of American parents and children demanding not only what they wanted, when they wanted it; but also – as the jingle goes – wanting it their way.

The teens in orange and red polyester and their manager in his early thirties were faring no better in trying to govern the ungovernable. The parents, not wanting to yell at their kids’ friends, yelled at the employees instead. The managers, caught between “The customer is always right” and common sense, both got and gave their share of abuse. I can think of no greater definition of chaos than what was happening in the middle of that roadside Burger King that day.

And then I saw a man behind a register I have never forgotten.

He was older than the other employees, maybe in his late fifties; but it was far more than his age that set him apart. Like a second sleeve, his arms were decorated with tattoos long since faded from the youth in which he had sat for them.

Some were the classics of his time: A naked lady with the ace of diamonds; “Lucky Seven” dice; a torn heart with the jagged rip down the middle. “Live Free or Die” in a beautiful flowing script across the upper right forearm, done professionally. Others screamed PRISON in no uncertain terms – ballpoint ink etched in with a sewing needle. Daggers, LOVE – HATE across the knuckles of the four finger of each hand, crude crucifixes were filled in around the professional body art. Assorted initials, too.

Cadillac buyers and old Five and Dimers, the refrain of an old country song, played through my mind as I looked at him.

Years spent working in a psychiatric facility for addicts told me that he was recovering from at least one very severe addiction – probably alcohol, maybe heroin too. The scars on his face, neck and arms said he had been a fighter, too. His sinewy muscles indexed the years he had spent behind bars. He was not a big man, but he was strong and unafraid in the way only people who have survived real fear can be.

His had been a life lived hard. He looked much older than his years. But despite all of these outward signs of a rough-and-tumble New Hampshire Desperado, somehow he exuded peace and kindness to a degree that would be remarkable in any man, but was especially startling in him.

He stood calmly and assuredly behind one of the cash registers, taking orders, placing them and giving change, confidently smoothing out the crumpled bills that were dropped on the wet counter in front of him. He spoke softly and kindly both to the customers and to the teens in orange and red behind him. Nothing seemed to perturb him; on the contrary, the louder the clamor, the greater his calmness.

At first I noticed him as being the only calm presence in this chaos; but as I continued to watch him, I noticed that his peacefulness exuded outward until he was surrounded by an island of calm in the circle of people around him. Without saying a word other than the normal customer service banter, he created an eye in the middle of the storm that was threatening to drown the Burger King that Saturday.

How could a middle-aged ex-con working in a rest stop Burger King have such a powerful effect on literally everyone around him?

I stood and watched, transfixed by what I was seeing and was amazed when a wave of that calm, peaceful, subtle joy reached even me, more than 20 feet away. I became centered, present, clear and certain. Around him was a radius of adults and kids alike fell quiet, patient, calm and considerate of one another. It was if he were exuding peace by his very presence.

As if I had gotten what I had come for, I left the Burger King got back into my car.

“I just saw Jesus,” I said to my companion.