I was drying off after a shower.

That is important information because I need you to understand that I was not sitting at my desk contemplating the mysteries of consciousness. I wasn't working on my book. I wasn't researching symbolism, watching The Wizard of Oz, thinking about Dorothy, or doing anything remotely intellectual.

I was drying off.

Which, in hindsight, makes what happened next particularly ridiculous considering I have a PhD in Conscious-Centered Living.

Yep. An actual PhD. In consciousness.

Apparently, several years of education, a doctoral dissertation, countless hours exploring the human mind, and sixty trips around the sun were not quite enough preparation for this particular revelation.

I needed a shower.

Somewhere between drying off and getting dressed, The Wizard of Oz wandered into my head. I honestly don't even remember what opened that particular door because, again, I had not been thinking about anything even remotely Oz-related. One second I was minding my own business, and the next my brain casually dropped Dorothy and her merry little band of misfits into the bathroom with me.

And then something clicked.

Wait a minute.

Dorothy. The Scarecrow. The Tin Man. The Cowardly Lion. The Wizard. The yellow brick road.

Oh, for crying out loud...

I just stood there for a second because suddenly this story I have known pretty much my entire life looked completely different.

The Scarecrow spends the whole story believing he needs a brain, while repeatedly being the one who figures stuff out. The Tin Man is convinced he doesn't have a heart while being one of the most deeply caring characters in the entire story. The Lion believes he lacks courage while continuing to do things even though he's scared.

And Dorothy?

Dorothy spends the entire freaking adventure trying to get home when she has had the ability to get there all along.

Holy Shift.

They aren't traveling to Oz to become something they aren't. They're traveling to Oz because they don't know yet that they already are.

At this point I believe the towel had been completely forgotten because now my brain was off and running.

They follow the yellow brick road because they've been told that's where the answers are. Along the way they encounter distractions, fears, detours, flying monkeys, poppies, witches, questionable directions and enough general chaos to make any respectable road trip reconsider its life choices.

They keep going because somewhere at the end of that road is supposedly someone who knows more than they do. Someone powerful. Someone who can finally give them what they're missing.

The Great and Powerful Oz.

Except when they finally get there, the all-knowing authority they've been chasing turns out to be some guy behind a curtain pulling levers and making a lot of noise.

I started laughing because all I could think was...

Oh my goodness...

It's Fred with a smoke machine.

For anyone who hasn't met Fred yet, Fred is Mr. Finite, the name I gave my ego quite a while ago. He's the part of my mind whose primary occupation seems to be keeping me alive by constantly reminding me of everything that has ever gone wrong, could possibly go wrong, once happened to somebody else, or theoretically might happen if Mercury is in retrograde and somebody three counties over sneezes suspiciously.

Fred means well. He really does.

But give him a curtain, a microphone and access to special effects and apparently we've got ourselves a Wizard.

And suddenly I couldn't stop seeing it.

For the last several months, I have been working on The Great Escape, exploring the way our minds work and the stories, beliefs, fears and expectations we collect along the way. More recently, that exploration has taken on a life of its own.

Which is where this whole thing became even more ridiculous.

My PhD is in Conscious-Centered Living. The Great Escape grew from my doctoral work. I have spent years exploring consciousness, perspective, awareness, the ego, the subconscious, the stories we tell ourselves and the ways we forget who we are underneath all the things we've been taught to believe.

And apparently Dorothy has been skipping down the yellow brick road waving at me this entire time.

The idea underneath all of it keeps coming back to something remarkably simple.

We spend an awful lot of our lives looking outside ourselves for things we think we're missing. Confidence, courage, worth, permission, answers, proof that we're doing life correctly.

We look to parents, teachers, religions, experts, partners, bosses, gurus, books, social media and occasionally people with enormous floating green heads to tell us who we are and what we're capable of.

And there I was, standing in my bathroom with wet hair, realizing Dorothy and her friends had apparently been trying to tell me this since 1939.

Well, shift.

The funny thing is, I've seen The Wizard of Oz. I know the story. Everybody knows the story.

None of this is new.

The Scarecrow has always had a brain. The Tin Man has always had a heart. The Lion has always had courage. Dorothy has always had the ability to go home. The Wizard has always been behind the curtain.

Nothing about the story changed while I was taking my shower.

I did.

And maybe that's why it suddenly felt so ridiculously obvious.

I couldn't have seen The Wizard of Oz this way thirty years ago because I wasn't looking at life this way thirty years ago. I couldn't have made the connection before I started understanding my own mind differently. Before Fred got a name. Before the Infinite Council wandered into my world. Before The Great Escape. 

Before all the questions, rabbit holes, experiences, conversations and wonderfully strange detours that eventually gave me the perspective I happened to be standing in this morning.

And apparently even earning a PhD in the subject couldn't make me see something before I was ready to see it.

That part stopped me for a minute.

Because knowledge and perspective aren't quite the same thing.

I can learn something. Study it. Research it. Write about it. Understand it intellectually. I can even earn a fancy piece of paper saying I know quite a bit about it.

And then one random Sunday morning I can get out of the shower and suddenly see something I've looked at my entire life from an entirely different perspective.

The story hadn't been hiding anything from me.

I simply hadn't been standing in the place where I could see it yet.

And THAT may have fascinated me even more than the Wizard-Fred connection.

How many things do we look at every day and believe we already understand simply because we've seen them before? How many stories? How many people? How many experiences? How many parts of ourselves?

We think we know what something means because we've already assigned meaning to it. Then life moves us a few feet to the left, hands us another experience, introduces us to another idea, knocks something over, rebuilds something else, and suddenly we look at the exact same thing and go...

Ohhhhhhh.

Well, that's different.

Nothing changed.

Except where we're standing.

Perspective is funny that way.

And maybe that is why I love it so much.

It doesn't necessarily change what happened. It doesn't rewrite the story. It doesn't pretend the flying monkeys weren't terrifying or that the Wicked Witch wasn't a giant pain in the ass.

It simply lets us see something that was there all along.

By the time I finally got dressed, I was still laughing about Fred and his smoke machine, but somewhere underneath the laughter was that familiar little feeling I get when something ordinary turns out not to have been ordinary at all.

I had gotten into the shower thinking about absolutely none of this.

I came out understanding The Wizard of Oz completely differently than I had for the previous sixty years.

Apparently, sometimes the yellow brick road leads to enlightenment.

And sometimes... you just need to take a shower.

What about you?

What have you looked at a hundred times, maybe for years, only to suddenly see it differently?

Maybe it was a story you've known forever. Maybe it was something someone said years ago that suddenly makes sense now. Maybe it was an experience you thought you understood until life moved you a few feet to the left and you realized there was another way to see it.

Or maybe it's something you're looking at right now.

Sometimes nothing around us has to change for something within us to shift. Sometimes we simply see what was already there from a perspective we couldn't access before.

And once you see it... good luck unseeing it. 

Shift happens... 

Keep Wandering With Me

Notes from the Wild is where I share the things I experience, notice, question, laugh about, stumble into, and occasionally discover while drying off after a shower.

If you enjoy wandering down these rabbit holes with me, subscribe to the blog so you never miss the next adventure. I have absolutely no idea where the next story will come from... which is kind of the point.

And if something you find here gives you a little hope, opens another possibility, or simply reminds you that you're not the only human figuring this stuff out as you go, pass it along. Share the story. Start a conversation. Be a spark for someone else.

The Happiness Matters Foundation creates opportunities for that spark of hope to become action. If you'd like to help us keep creating spaces, experiences, resources, and connections that remind people another possibility exists, support the Happiness Matters Foundation and help us keep Hope in Motion.

Because sometimes changing a life begins with something as simple as seeing what was there all along.

What about you?

Sometimes the smallest questions quietly rearrange everything.

Here I was, slurping my delicious morning magic potion of possibilities.

Okay... it was coffee.

But let's be honest. Around here coffee pretty much qualifies as a magic potion of possibilities anyway.

As I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, I came across a post by Michael Garrett, a North Carolina senator. Normally, when I see one of those extra-long social media posts, my brain politely says, "Yeah... that's gonna be a no from me." I skim a sentence or two — if that — and keep scrolling.

Not this morning.

I'm not entirely sure what made me stop and actually read the whole thing, but I did. And I'm really glad I did.

What can you do where you are now, with what you already have?

I've been sipping my coffee and thinking about those two sentences ever since. The funny thing is, my first reaction to that question wasn't particularly inspiring. It was something along the lines of, "Well... not much." Then, almost without realizing it, I started taking inventory. 

Not of my office. Not even of my life. Of this year.

Holy Shift.

It's only August.

My brain immediately started flipping through everything that's happened this year. It wasn't organized, either. It wasn't one of those neat little highlight reels people post on social media. It was more like someone had dumped an entire year's worth of memories onto the kitchen table and said, "Here... you figure it out." 

There were moments that made me laugh until I cried, moments that actually made me cry, plans that worked out better than I could have imagined, and others that happily marched straight into the Fuckit Bucket. There were books, podcasts, conversations, health situations, websites that somehow became much more than websites, perspective shifts, unexpected friendships, and a whole lot of coffee somewhere in between.

As I sat there mentally sorting through the wonderfully beautiful chaos that has been 2026, something else quietly caught my attention. 

I wasn't actually taking inventory. 

I was building a case. 

My Mr. Finite had somehow appointed himself lead prosecutor and was enthusiastically presenting Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C... every hard thing, every setback, every detour, every reason life had been more difficult than I would have preferred. To be fair, he wasn't making anything up. Hard things really are hard. He simply had a remarkable talent for believing that was the whole story.

That's when that question quietly interrupted the proceedings.

What can you do where you are now, with what you already have?

It was such a simple question, but it completely changed what I was looking at. 

Nothing in my year changed. 

The health situations were still there. 

The unexpected twists were still there. 

The victories were still there. 

The disappointments hadn't magically disappeared. 

The only thing that changed was the question I was asking.

Instead of asking myself to justify why life had been difficult, I found myself noticing everything that still existed despite the difficult parts. I had written. I had listened. I had built. I had laughed. I had loved. I had learned. I had helped people remember who they are while occasionally needing to remember that myself. Somehow, in the middle of everything life had thrown my way, life had also continued to hand me opportunities to do exactly what I believe I was put here to do.

Funny how Mr. Finite forgot to include those exhibits.

Maybe that's why those four words landed so deeply too.

Hard things are hard.

There's something incredibly freeing about that sentence because it doesn't ask us to pretend. It doesn't tell us to "look on the bright side" or slap a motivational quote over something that genuinely hurts. It simply tells the truth.

Hard things are hard.

But they aren't the whole story.

The whole story is what we do next.

Not next year.

Not when life settles down.

Not when we finally have more money, more time, better health, or fewer responsibilities.

Now.

Right here.

With what we already have.

As I finished my coffee, I realized that maybe life has never asked me to change the whole world. Maybe it's simply asking me to faithfully use whatever is already in my hands today. Write the story. Have the conversation. Encourage the person. Build the thing. Love the people. Laugh when I can. Cry when I need to. And when another hard thing inevitably shows up — because let's be honest, it will — acknowledge that it's hard, invite Mr. Finite to have his opinion, and then gently ask the question he keeps forgetting."

Okay... so what can we do from here?"

What about you?

What can you do where you are now, with what you already have?

Maybe it's checking on a neighbor. Maybe it's making the phone call you've been putting off. Maybe it's offering a kind word, sharing your story, lending a hand, or simply sitting with someone who needs to know they aren't alone.

Big change has never belonged only to presidents, celebrities, or people with impressive titles.

It has always belonged to ordinary people who decided to become a spark exactly where they were.

I'd love to hear your answer in the comments.

And if this story reminded you that hope isn't about waiting for perfect circumstances but about taking the next step with what's already in your hands, would you help us keep that spark moving?

Read another story. Share this one with someone who needs it today. Tell someone they matter. Or explore the Happiness Matters Foundation and discover ways you can Be a Spark in your own community. Hope doesn't spread because one person does everything. It grows because ordinary people keep passing the light to one another.

After all...

As long as you draw a breath, there is still a spark of hope within you.

Sometimes the world is simply waiting for you to let it shine.