You Deserve Peace of Mind

About the book

Ten years ago I wrote a book about happiness. What followed was the decade that tested it.

A relationship of five years ended. Then the borders closed. Then my father died in his sleep, and I watched his funeral on a screen from another country. For a long stretch after that I could not account for the sadness, or shake the sense that I had no business teaching anyone anything.

When the borders opened I left, and stayed away for nine and a half months. Some of it was spent in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia, a long way from anyone who knew me.

I came back with something I had not gone looking for. Not answers. A different relationship to not having them.

This book is what I came to understand about acceptance, detachment, and peace of mind, and why happiness was never the thing to aim at.

Happiness is the fruit. Peace is the tree.