Most lives are a mix of misery and joy, loneliness and love, apathy and purpose. For some, however, the endless pursuit of happiness (and avoidance of its opposite) at last illuminates the wisdom of the Buddha’s maxim that life is suffering. We begin to yearn for the mystics’ promise of a peace that surpasses understanding and, wittingly or not, find ourselves on this thing called a spiritual path. As for the whole ‘beware of the Doug’ thing? A central component of those same mystical teachings is the understanding that while Doug is required to start the journey, the journey is a failure unless Doug disappears along the way. And since I’m still very much here, the journey continues.