Suffering is inevitable. Misery is optional.
Essays on grief, mental health, and the practice of showing up — from a psychologist still working it out himself.
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Mental health stigma: how far have we come?
By Les Kertay • October 23, 2021We are talking a lot about mental health and associated stigma. The consensus seems to be that mental health stigma is on the run, especially when we talk about workplace mental health. I’m not so sure. I found myself asking, how far have we come with mental health stigma? Roughly 25 years ago I got… -
Mental health and the sins of the fathers
By Les Kertay • February 17, 2021“The sins of the fathers are to be laid upon the children” (from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene V). And so it goes when we start to talk about mental health in the US, and the US workforce. My social media advisor would tell me not to use the article I’ve linked… -
16 tons and what do you get? (Let’s talk about work)
By Les Kertay • February 12, 2021We love to complain about work. It’s water cooler talk – we connect over the shared misery that we often don’t actually feel. Why? -
Suffering is inevitable, misery is optional (part 2)
By Les Kertay • January 31, 2021Suffering is inevitable, misery is optional In last week’s post, I wrote on suffering, the first noble truth of Buddhist philosophy. Blog posts don’t do it justice but it’s worth whetting appetites if I can. I also wrote that suffering is inevitable, but misery is optional. Alas, we’ve gotten it entirely backward. We desperately want… -
Suffering is inevitable, misery is optional (Part 1)
By Les Kertay • January 25, 2021Suffering is inevitable, misery is optional I am a “glass half-full” kind of guy. Most of the time I find the good in people and in my circumstances, no matter how bad things seem. I just naturally believe that although suffering is inevitable, misery is option When Gabriel died, through all the heart-rending tears there… -
Outrage fatigue dies hard
By Les Kertay • January 20, 2021The last four years have been like living in a house with an alcoholic parent. The trauma isn’t that you have a parent who’s a drunk; it’s that you never know what outrage is coming next. -
Always remember this day
By Les Kertay • January 7, 2021Yesterday Trump tweeted to his followers, “always remember this day.” It may be one of the few things on which we agree. -
Las Vegas – Is this what they mean by “the genuine heart of sadness?”
By Les Kertay • October 5, 2017I can barely contain my tears today. Is this the genuine heart of sadness? I wrote that, and much of what follows, this morning in an email to a friend of nearly 50 years. Now I write it for you. All of you. Everyone. Even, maybe especially, those of you with whom I disagree about… -
Life is just too short
By Les Kertay • September 3, 2017Life is just too short to waste a moment of it. Really. Really, really. Too. Damn. Short. Let’s get this in perspective: if the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth were condensed down to a year: Humans (the genus homo) appeared today, about 4 hours, 52 minutes ago Archaic humans (subgenus homo) appeared 1 hour,… -
Losing a child – The brief life of Gabriel Liam Kertay
By Les Kertay • July 2, 2017Every year I tell myself I’m going to write a new post about losing a child. I never do. A couple of years ago, I realized that in this post, I left it all on the table. I republished it with a few minor changes, and today I’m doing it again. Because whether or not…