Gotham City Soul

We all know someone like this. It’s the person you don’t want to stop and talk to when you see him or her on the street, yet has done nothing morally or ethically wrong to justify your ignoring that individual. It could be anybody, from any background, and the reasons for not wanting to spend any time with that person are varied: They invade your space when you talk. They are loud. They are terminally depressing. They are always on a soapbox. They tell the same story over and over again. They are hard to understand. They bore you to tears. They try your patience. Yet they are not bad people, and you feel they deserve your attention if they ask for it. In my case, it was a man who is mentally disabled in some way, and since I’m not a psychiatrist I wouldn’t begin to know how. He talks slow and with a slur. He shuffles when he walks. His movements are stiff. But he’s a decent fellow, as far as I know. When I see him, which is not often, I stop to chat for a moment or two. Not because...

I was walking down 14th Street and past a man who begs for money at the same spot every day. He is a white man, most likely in his twenties. He has long hair, a tattooed neck, is grimy, and I could pretty much bet any large amount of money that he is a junkie—mostly because I’ve seen him nodding off junkie-style, which is to say, while he’s in the middle of asking for change. I never give him money. Until a few days ago, that is. For whatever reason, I gave him a dollar. He was nodding off when I did it, so he didn’t see me put the money in his cup, which is maybe part of the reason why I gave it to him. Or was it? Did my conscience finally bother me enough? Because even though I don’t like to admit it, I have criteria for giving to panhandlers just as much as I do to any of the myriad charities who invade my mailbox on a near-daily basis (not to mention the ones who call all the time but hang up if they get the answering machine; note to those charities—I can’t help you if you don’t ...

So the other day I was reading an article in the July Esquire about something called Radical Honesty . In essence, to practice radical honesty you must tell all truth all of the time. He says, according to the article's author A.J. Jacobs, that "we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing ? No such thing." 'You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole f--- ing life. It's a better life,' explained the 66-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist Brad Blanton , creator of the RH movement. The only good times to lie, says Blanton , is if you're hiding Anne Frank in the attic and the Nazis are pounding on your door, or to the government; his e...

So, I was having my tea the other morning when I hear "Is There a Happiness Gene?" floating out of my television. Another teaser went something like, "a condition that causes extreme joy, but it comes with a price," or something like that. The segment, which was on Good Morning America was about Williams Syndrome, according to GMA's reporters "a condition in which the areas of the brain that process hearing are more rich in connections than a normal brain, resulting in people who experience sound—like music and language—more intensely than the rest of the population. They also tend to be incredibly sociable." The segment featured a young man named Ben Monkaba, who was, indeed, joyful, from the looks of it; he glowed. And it wasn't phony. He made me put down my tea and listen to him. He went straight to my heart. What’s remarkable is that this condition is not brought on by what he does have, but what he doesn’t: He is missing 20 chromosomes on one...