So Turns the Wheel

March 10, 2026 — Pat Bertram

So here’s something I don’t understand about the publishing decisions for the end of the Wheel of Time.

They chose an author based on a memorial he wrote for Robert Jordan, but that piece was more about how Jordan had been a big influence on him in his own writing career rather than about Jordan’s books. Admittedly, the memorial was a paean to Jordan’s writing and to the saga as a whole, but though he called himself a big fan, he barely knew the books. And he certainly didn’t seem to comprehend the characters or where they were going.

I do understand they wanted a proven author yet one who wasn’t so big that he couldn’t take the time to work on the ending of Jordan’s books, but even so, the writer they chose didn’t have the time to spend rereading the books or going through the notes that had been gathered for him because he had his other deadlines to meet.

Still, a major factor with the Wheel of Time, is that the books and the internet were more or less born at the same time and attracted the same age group. So there were many thousands of people who’d lived with the books their whole lives. While waiting for a new book to be published, they spent millions of words on hundreds of sites discussing the books and their theories of what they thought would happen. Some of these people gave brilliant analyses of the characters and the culture. One fellow in particular, a college student who was majoring in comparative religions, wrote reams of essays and had insights that gave him a major following.

So getting to what I don’t understand — with that amazing resource at their fingertips (literally at their fingertips since they’d be typing on a keyboard), why didn’t they use it?

They could have started discussions asking what loose ends there were in the myriad plots, asking about where they thought the characters should go and what they should do, asking what they’d most like to see at the end, asking about what needed clarification, asking what things that were foreshadowed still needed to happen, asking . . . well, asking just about anything. With all those thousands of people ready to discuss everything to do with the Wheel of Time, there’d be no need for the substitute to reread the books or go through notes that made sense only to Jordan himself. If nothing else, it would have been a good starting place. And the books would actually have been a continuation of Jordan’s story instead of filled with new characters and revamped long-standing characters because the substitute wanted to . . . actually, I don’t know what he wanted to do. Make the books his own, perhaps.

It’s funny that almost no one will criticize any of those last three books. I have no idea why they are so sacrosanct except that maybe people were glad to have any ending. Oddly, the bits of criticism that are let through the barrier of protection are blamed on Jordan, even though the points in question were completely the creation of the substitute author. Also, in one book of Jordan’s, the timeline wasn’t kept straight (the story for each POV character started at the same place, giving the book a feeling of repetition), which he later said he regretted. And so did his fans. They sure dumped on him for that! Yet when the substitute skewed his own timeline in one book so badly that he had a character in two places at once and another who was in a different timeline than the characters he met up with, no one said a single word.

I suppose, in the end it doesn’t matter. No one else cares, obviously. Nor will I once I forget those books completely. As it is now, I feel an itch every time I see something in Jordan’s work that was mangled by the substitute. For example, Jordan explained how one magical machine worked on its own to project a character into scenarios based on the character’s fears, and yet the substitute had people working the machine to create horrific scenarios for the one being tested in the machine. Nothing major. Just itchable.

It’s possible no one could have finished the series properly. The more I see all the foreshadowing that appears in Jordan’s work several books before the foreshadowed event, or find hints of wry humor and ironies that won’t be understood until later, or see minor characters that are threaded throughout the saga, or marvel at the subtleties as well as all that goes on beneath the surface, or understand that something that seemed to be a win for the side of Light was actually a win for the Dark, the more I am astounded by what Jordan was able to keep in his head. I had a hard enough time keeping the 100,000 words in each of my own books straight. (In one case, I had to use a bulletin board and hundreds of tiny pieces of paper each containing a bit of information to figure out the timeline.) I can’t imagine keeping millions of words and thousands of characters and hundreds of plotlines in my head. Nor can I imagine doing all this in a world of my own creation. (Long before I’d ever heard of the Wheel of Time, I considered creating my own fantasy world for a book or series of books, but I gave it up since I have a hard enough time imagining the real world, let alone a fake one.)

His writing technique probably precluded any other author, too, since he was both what is known as a pantster (one who writes by the seat of his pants, who creates and discovers the story as he is writing) and a plotter (one who outlines, who knows the story before he writes).

It amuses me to think we had that in common — that we both had major points we wanted to hit as well as an end to aim for, but the journey to get there wasn’t plotted out. But the rest of it? Keeping all those words and characters and worlds in one’s head? That’s not me, for sure!

Just one more thing for me to puzzle out when it comes to these books — not just what he wrote, but how he wrote.

None of this, of course, helps me with my own writing because I’m pretty sure I don’t have another book in me, nor does it help me to understand . . . much of anything, actually.

Which brings me full circle to the beginning of this article where I mention that there’s something I don’t understand.

And so turns the wheel . . .

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Skimming

March 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I have the terrible habit of ingesting books whole without actually reading the words. I’ve never been able to explain how I read — it’s not skimming exactly, but if I read every single word individually as if reading aloud, the meaning of what I’m reading gets lost in the words themselves. Maybe the way I read is a form of meditation. Or daydreaming without visuals. (I have aphantasia — the inability to form images in my mind.) Despite having said that, I do occasionally skim, especially scenes of violence or sections that don’t keep my interest, and considering that I have read more than 25,000 books of all genres, unless the writing is better than merely competent, most books have huge sections that don’t keep my attention. Also, when it comes to fiction, there are few plots or characters that don’t echo in my head — some because I’ve read those very books before; some because they are similar to those books.

Which is why it surprises me that the Wheel of Time saga has caught my imagination enough to allow for rereads. Though there are chunks of the middle books that I can’t bring myself to read again, or even just to skim, I find myself trying to slow down and savor the rest of Jordan’s words. (Even subtracting out the last three unreadable books written by the substitute author as well as the chunky parts of Jordan’s books, there are still approximately three million words that I do read. And if half of those are used for prosaic storytelling, there are still one and a half million of Jordan’s words to savor.) A lot of his writing is truly beautiful. The subtleties are beguiling. And there is much to puzzle out as I deconstruct Robert Jordan’s world and his writing.

Sometimes I miss little things if I get to skimming a section I remember well, until something draws me back. For example, in a passage I read today, a character noticed the hero’s guards/ guardians/ personal army outside the hero’s room quietly playing a finger game: knife, paper, stone. A little later, three of those people entered the hero’s room to deal with his latest infraction of their “honor.” As they left him, one said they’d won the right to punish him and warned him not to dishonor them again. Written out like this, it’s obvious that their game (their version of rock, scissors, paper) was to choose those three, but when these elements are separated by several pages, the association becomes so obscured I missed it in previous rereads.

Admittedly, the situation wasn’t important to the overall story, but it tickles me to find such correlations. Because of this, I’m training myself not to skim, but that will work against me in the long run — without skimming, most books are not worth my time to read.

When I was young, I often read as a way of expanding my mental horizons — a way to work out in advance how I would deal with the circumstances the characters are faced with — but that’s no longer an issue with me since most fictional situations are now either somewhere in my past or will never be in my future. A choice between love and a career? No longer applicable. What to do with an unexpected pregnancy? Definitely not applicable! Taking revenge on someone? Not something I would ever do. Save the world from the forces of evil? Only applicable if that evil appears in my own backyard and even then it’s not something I want to contemplate. (I’m wary enough of thoughts to think that thinking itself can bring down upon my head whatever it is I am thinking of.)

Without any necessity for reading myself into the story, most novels become ho-hum, especially if the writer can’t make me care for the characters. Without skimming at least a part of the book and skipping other sections completely, I’d probably never have read most of the books that I did. Not finding other books of interest to me could be why I’m caught in the spokes of the Wheel of Time.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and since you’re probably skimming this essay anyway, I doubt it matters.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Nothing to Do With Me

March 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Every once in a great while, I will see a spike in my blog statistics where suddenly, for no apparent reason, the views on a particular day jump by 1000% or even more. During the first years of blogging, I could see where views came from, what was googled, or what link was clicked to get here, but apparently, privacy laws have now eliminated much of the practice. Sometimes I can see what posts were read, but when there is a big jump, all I see is that the views were for the homepage of my blog, not any specific article.

So I’m left wondering what it was I said that struck such a chord. I know it’s not something I wrote on that day, because this even happened a few times when this blog was all but dormant. Since no one left a comment on any post (which few people do any more), I’m left in the dark.

I’d think this was an algorithmic anomaly or maybe bots trolling the site since sometimes the jump signifies a single view, but sometimes the statistics show that people stayed to check out another post or two. Why? I have no idea. In the past when this happened, I’d congratulate myself on having said something that resonated with people, but now I wonder if such a jump in views has anything to do with me at all.

For a non-blog example: it used to be that when people were kind to me, I’d be pleased with myself, thinking that their kindness was because of something I did, my own kindness, perhaps, then it dawned on me that they were kind to me simply because they themselves were kind. It had nothing to do with me.

Is it possible the jump in views has nothing to do with me or anything I wrote? It certainly has nothing to do with any promotion I’m doing because I gave up promoting this blog years ago when Facebook banned it for being spam. Sometimes I like to think this blog could be considered S.P.A.M. — Special, Perspicacious, Astute, Meaningful — at least to some people, but that’s just me being self-indulgent. But, come to think of it, writing this blog itself is a form of self-indulgence. And so perhaps is wondering what brings people here.

I don’t suppose it matters why people come, at least it shouldn’t matter to me, though I can hope it matters to those who stop by. In any case, I can only write what I feel, throw my words out to the winds of the internet, and what happens after that has nothing to do with me.

It’s like that saying: “What others think of you is none of your business.” Perhaps nothing that happens here after I post is any of my business. Though that doesn’t mean I can’t be curious about what brings people here.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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The Algorithms Made Me Do It

March 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Algorithms are an interesting concept. Because I followed the monks’ walk, my news feed is full of Buddhist teachings as well as a daily meditation on peace from the walkers. Also, for some reason, I see a lot of biblical references especially referring to Armageddon.

Because I posted a blog about conspiracy theories, my feed is full of conspiracy theories, (Note to R.U. — including information about lizard people). Also, there’s much talk of what people have found in the Epstein files now that they are searchable for the public, confirming events that once were only surmised by the theorists.

Because I like to see all sides of what is called “truth,” I get a lot of leftist ideology. And because I sometimes check out news from black conservative commentators, I get a lot of information about what this administration is doing to counteract what the left is doing.

This makes for a wild ride, for sure. And it makes for wild thoughts, especially when seen through the lens of The Wheel of Time, which is, at its most basic, a tale of a cosmic battle between the forces of good (and not so good) and the forces of evil (and not totally evil).

What if the conspiracists and the biblical scholars are right and we are currently going through a cosmic battle that is being played on various stages?

The political stage, of course, which seems pretty obvious since the two sides are diametrically opposed.

The religious stage and the battle between cosmic forces for good and evil as described in The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and countless other novels. An ongoing battle between Christians and those who are trying to decimate Christians, such as what is going on in Nigeria.

A technological stage with perhaps a battle between humans and artificial intelligence (as has been predicted in hundreds of science fiction stories for the past century). And what is called a paradigm shift from our present awareness to a greater one (or at least a different one) if we are to sustain our species.

If the algorithms are telling me anything, it’s that there is a present good to counter the “evil,” though I wouldn’t call it evil — it seems more like unrest, an acceptance of criminal behavior as the norm, and a growing feeling that laws don’t have to be followed if you feel morally superior to those laws. As the left continues to push their socialistic-communist agenda, others are fighting back, stressing individualism over collectivism. As the unrest grows, so does the personal need to find peace within and hence the vast influence of the Walk for Peace. And the paradigm shift continues to shift, at least on a political level, such as the abandonment of punitive climate controls to one that accepts the necessity of power-hungry AI data centers.

Even if there is some sort of cosmic battle going on, and even if I sometimes worry that the world is changing to a reality I might not be able to recognize, would we even notice, or for the most part, will our lives go on, with us noticing only small changes in how we interact with the world and each other?

Probably what will happen, no matter what the algorithms tell me, is the same thing that is happening in The Wheel of Time now that I have eliminated the ridiculous substitute-author ending from my studies — just the same scenarios played out over and over again.

Does any of this make sense? I have no idea if it even makes sense to me — it’s just a wild idea I am playing with. And who knows, maybe the algorithms made me do it.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, culture, history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 7 Comments »

We Have Met the Alien and He Is Us

March 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I had to laugh at the news that the government is going to release the UFO files, because the truth is, most have already been released, but people don’t want to believe the prosaic (though often horrific) explanations. I spent years researching UFOs and looking for the truth of aliens among us. And you know what I discovered? They are us. Not you and me, but humans, nevertheless. Top secret projects like Project Mogul. MKUltra and human experimentation on US citizens by the likes of the CIA and the DIA. Experimental aircraft that was decades beyond what was released to the public. Drone technology. Laser technology. Extra-Low Frequency beams. And fake stories to cover up illegal dumping. (This last was Fred Crisman, an agent of disruption for the CIA, who also turns up in JFK conspiracies.)

We always think we deserve to know the truth, but our leaders don’t think that way, so there’s a lot of so-called UFO activity that will never be released, especially if it involves crimes against citizens or when it involves national security. (Or even when it comes down to how to control us citizens.) Military technology is always a decade or two ahead of what is released to the public. In UFO lore, there is a tale of a mysterious fellow who went around to various businesses and shared information that supposedly came from the aliens, such as fiber optic technology, but the truth is, this fellow was very human. He was Philip Corso, who headed up the Foreign Technology Desk in Army Research and Development, and one of his jobs was doling out military technology that needed to go public.

[He’s also the intelligence officer who did research on POWs from the Korean War, found out that most of them had been sent to Russia, and so decided it was best — and cheaper — to tell the world they were dead rather than continuing to pay their salaries or even trying to rescue them. And that’s been the US policy ever since. He’s also the one who said he saw Oswald at the Russian Embassy. And oh, after the truth about Roswell came out, he wrote a book supposedly telling the truth about Roswell, which was, in fact, all a lie. Shady fellow, for sure.]

Of course, if you’d read my book Light Bringer, you’d know all this. It’s fiction, but I needed a place to dump a lot of my research. Weirdly, though it was supposed to debunk all the UFO theories, I ended up creating my own alien group based on Zecharia Sitchen’s books about Sumerian cosmology, so if you do read the novel, take what that part with a grain of salt.

I was going to set out all I discovered about Roswell here, but I did a bit of online research, and everything that took me decades to find is available, all included in the U.S. Department of War’s “The Roswell Report: Case Closed.” It tells all about Project Mogul, a top-secret military operation that once had a security rating and a budget as high as that of the Manhattan Project. Sheesh. I could have saved myself a lot of work if I’d just waited a few years and read that report! At least now, though, it will save me the trouble of writing it all out here.

One thing I haven’t been able to find more information about is that supposedly, when the CIA were in Tibet, they discovered a living group of tiny humans, three or four feet tall, with long fingers and long, skinny necks. Add a jumpsuit and a mask with strange eyes, and there you have the “aliens” we are so familiar with. I wish I could have found out more than just the snippet I did, but still it’s worth mentioning.

It does makes me wonder what sort of things will come out if the files and information and photos are released now. Will there be a redaction, saying that aliens are real? Will there be a bunch of stuff released to hoax us? (Because someone wants us to believe the myth, otherwise, why would a character with the clout of Corso be negating the truth?)

Either way, I doubt people will believe the official story. The UFO myth we believe is too powerful. Of course, knowing how we’ve been played for so many decades, it’s always possible the myth covers up a more disturbing idea that they live among us. But frankly, I don’t know and don’t want to guess.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Stepping on Toes

March 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I stopped paying attention to partisan politics when, as a young adult, I learned about shadow governments, globalists, an international elite of some sort that was running things behind the scenes.

Even if I hadn’t researched the histories hidden in books, some of the sense that both parties were working toward the same agenda is obvious when you see how often policies changed to reflect the losing candidate’s point of view. It seemed so contrived — a play put on for the benefit of the voters who otherwise didn’t count in the rulers’ grand scheme of power and political leverage.

The way I saw it, when a tiger and a lion fight (or an elephant and a donkey), the poor rabbit always gets trampled. Or devoured.

Trump’s first term caught my attention because he seemed an outlier, not a politician but someone who had a different agenda, something more than just accruing power and money as politicians so often do. But I never really thought much about him and his presidency until the personal attacks on him began, most of which have subsequently been litigated out of existence or are proving to be false as more information comes out. (Many of those lies are still believed despite proof to the contrary.)

Those attacks continue. There’s an almost constant barrage of lies, hatred, vilification, name calling, more than any other president in my lifetime. Even if the current president is as bad as they say he is, it still comes down to why he’s not being protected from the outrage. Almost all presidents were corrupt (or corrupted) in some way, almost all overreached their power, but (with a couple of exceptions) the system protected them, hiding their transgressions from the voters, or at least downplaying their corruption. But not him. He’s out there on his own. The traditional media will not report anything he does that benefits people, and if they do, they spin it so it’s a bad thing. And news apps perpetuate this bias.  A content analysist, Media Research Center, reviewed the news that was presented in January to Apple News’ 140 million subscribers, and out of more than 600 articles during the most popular time slot, not a single article was from a conservative point of view.

Since this is history as it’s happening rather than books, I have no recourse but to do my research online to try to find out why the power brokers, the opposition party, and those who influence public opinion are treating this president differently from previous presidents. I’ve found many in-depth articles showing how he’s making his deals. Like with any dealmaker, he starts out with a brash opening, and it’s that opening that gets reported and excoriated. The steps that come after the opening salvo are ignored, so people only see how outlandish that first statement is without noticing the strategic moves he has already planned to get what he’s really aiming for.

I suppose it’s possible that the globalists let him continue doing his thing because of the chaos his presidency causes, which I’m sure furthers their agenda. But why do those in powerful positions hate him so much if he’s just the reverse of the same globalist coin presidents have always been? Is it possible that he’s actually doing something to upset or at least delay globalist policies that have been playing out for over a hundred years?

The first 150 years of the United States, there was no income tax. There were tariffs to support the various government programs, tariffs that were so successful, there was money to spare. Then, at the instigation of a cabal of bankers, the US money system was turned over to the newly created Federal Reserve Board, which Woodrow Wilson later admitted he regretted: “The Federal Reserve Act, which I signed, allowed our system of credit to become too concentrated. The growth of the nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world — a government run by the opinion of small groups of dominant men.”

Not only did the government of the time create the Federal Reserve Board (which they kept secret from the public for more than a decade), but they amended the constitution to allow for an income tax, which just twenty years previously had been decreed unconstitutional. (At first, they only taxed the highest 1%. In 1942, Frankin D. Roosevelt increased the number of people to be taxed to 75% of workers.) Because of bribery, corruption, and influence from other nations, tariffs were rescinded and taxation and debt became the name of the game.

Tariffs were always meant to be the main source of income of the United States not, as it is now, directly and solely from American citizens through taxation.

So why the hatred of Trump and his tariffs? Why the hatred of his push for nationalism? Why the insistence on destroying the immigration policies that all of his predecessors had created and espoused? These things, in the main, seem as if they would only help the country, though people point to each of these things (as well as other policies he’s followed) as reason to hate him, forgetting that the hatred and vitriol came first. Even before he was inaugurated, before he did a single thing, there was already talk of impeachment. And in the years between his two terms, there was a concentrated effort to discredit him irreparably.

After weeks, months, and way too many hours on the internet trying to figure this out, I still don’t know the truth, but I do know that anyone who is so utterly vilified (someone moreover who once was loved by the very people who are now vilifying him), has to be stepping on someone’s toes. It could be all part of the play, but it seems too extreme to me. Too confusing. By the time enough years have passed to put this all into historical perspective, I’ll be long gone, so I might never know. I don’t suppose it matters anyway, since what is happening and what is going to happen will happen even if I don’t understand the play that’s being enacted.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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White House vs. White Tower

February 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram

More and more, I see The Wheel of Time saga as an allegory of our time.

In the story, there is a powerful group of women, called “witches” by some, who use the energy of the universe to sometimes help, sometimes hinder humans. It used to be that men used one side of the power and women another (think yin yang), but the men’s side became tainted and unusable, leaving women the sole users of power. The women power wielders live in a town more or less based on the Vatican, in a building called “The White Tower,” that supposedly was based on the Padgett-Thomas Barracks at the Citadel, Robert Jordan’s alma mater. This white tower also invokes images of “ivory tower” because of their detachment from the world and their arrogance in believing that despite their insularity, they know better than everyone else. And, in being a seat of power, it also invokes images of the White House.

The leader of these women is called the Amyrlin Seat, which is both her title and the name of her position. (Can you see the similarity to “Merlin?” That’s the fun puzzle part of the books for me.) Although many of the various factions of this White Tower hate the woman who holds the office of Amyrlin Seat, they still respect the position because the position itself is more than the current leader. Leaders change, but the position remains, and it’s the position itself that’s important.

I’m sure you know where this is headed. When did we come to see the position of president as solely the person who holds the position rather than the position itself? This was so very obvious during the State of the Union Address. Half the politicians completely and totally disrespected the presidency. Not just the man. The position. The institution. (And the constitution itself, since the State of the Union Address is a constitutionally mandated report from the president to Congress.) I can understand not respecting the office holder, but to disrespect the office itself, the “position of the president” seems . . .

I had to stop there and think. I don’t know what it seems. Uncalled for, certainly. Defiant, probably. Childish, perhaps. I do wonder though: if one faction can’t respect the position, if they demean it so publicly, why would they expect anyone to respect them when they attain that position?

The position itself should garner some respect even if the person holding the position doesn’t. Or maybe I’m wrong. Or the wrong generation. I don’t know.

In The Wheel of Time, the tower splits, and each side chooses a different Amyrlin Seat, basically running two different governments under the same name. Each Amyrlin claims she is the true leader and the other is the rebel, which leaves most of the common folk crushed between the two of them.

In the USA, we still have just one president, but half the government doesn’t even seem to acknowledge, let alone respect, the elected leader, which gives us two factions, each acting as they are the “real” leader.

Doesn’t sound as if this bodes well for us common folk.

Or maybe it will end well. After all, the White Tower was eventually reunited under one Amyrlin, so perhaps we’ll eventually find some sort of unity.

It could happen.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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Life, Fate, and Conundrums

February 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

On Chinese New Year, a friend of Chinese descent who was born and raised in Malaysia, and I, a German/Polish hybrid, who was born in raised in Colorado, had lunch at a Chinese restaurant owned by a man originally from Vietnam, who chatted with us while we waited for our food. Mind boggling, right? I can’t even imagine how many tens of thousands of decisions we each made, how many unexpected changes in our lives, and how much time had to pass for all of us to end up in that exact place at that exact moment.

It almost makes me believe in fate, but perhaps that’s what fate is: everything that has to occur so that a certain event can happen. In some cases, those events and decisions are simply living and going where the day takes you. Other times, it’s a significant event, such as the death of a loved one. In my case, Jeff’s death untethered me so that I ended up in California taking care of my father. My father’s death broke whatever strings I had left, which sent me all over the country in an effort to run away from my life as well as run towards it. It’s mere happenstance — an unasked-for email from a real estate site — that I ended up here.

I’ve been thinking about this definition of fate as it applies to the Walk for Peace. On October 26, 2025, the monks set out from Fort Worth with barely a wave good-bye. Almost no one noticed them as they walked, though they did get some heckling and a few people who stopped to talk. Truckers and Texas residents shared sightings on Tik Tok, which got them some online followers, but mostly, they walked alone along empty roads.

Then, on November 19, a pick-up struck the escort vehicle so hard that it pushed the escort vehicle into the walking monks. Several were injured. One seriously. (He lost a leg but was doing well enough to attend the ending ceremonies in Washington.) After seeing that their fellow monk was taken care of, they continued their walk with the Harris County sheriff’s department riding alongside to keep them safe. The sheriff notified the sheriff’s department in the next county, and those law enforcement officers continued the protection, and so it went, all across the country.

That accident and the law enforcement notifications catapulted the walk into the public’s eye. No longer just a few bystanders on the open road — suddenly there were miles and miles of people lining their pathway. Thousands of people — hundreds of thousands — endured the cold and wind and rain and snow to wait to see the monks walk by. Millions followed the monks online. Lives were changed. People vowed to find peace within. And the effects of that walk are still rippling.

So, what would have happened without that accident? Was it a necessary part of their journey? Was it fate that it happened? Did the monk who lost his leg think it was a fair payment for the good the walk did? Was it a further example of their belief in breathing, in peace, in accepting the physical aspect of suffering while letting go of the resulting mental suffering? (One of the lessons they taught was that 10% of suffering was physical, the other 90% mental.)

Conundrums like this keep me wondering about life, about all the dots that need to be connected for anything to happen. Depending on what source you check out, there is between a one in seventy trillion chance and a one in four hundred trillion chance of any one of us being born.

So many changes and connections. Events and decisions. And time, lots of time. And all to get us here, to this very moment.

A moment that was eons in the making, a moment that will never be repeated.

During this rare and precious moment, may you be well, happy, and at peace.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Daily Blogging

February 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram

For years, I blogged every day mostly as a discipline to give form to my days and because I knew that if I ever stopped, I might just let the practice slide away. And the practice did. Slide away, I mean. In January 2023, I still posted every day, and I continued until the middle of February. After that, I posted only sporadically, maybe 25 posts the rest of that year, 7 the following year, and 14 last year. Not very impressive, but then, it wasn’t supposed to be. I simply had nothing to say that I wanted to make public. I’d gradually become sensitive about putting my thoughts out there for anyone to read, so unless I had something innocuous to post, such as pictures of my garden, I kept my thoughts to myself.

Which makes me wonder why all of a sudden this year I’ve found myself blogging again. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I just posted on the first of January, then the second, then . . .

Now here I am, day 53 of daily blogging, though I have no idea why. Can’t even begin to guess. Not that the reason matters. What matters, I suppose, is that I am sitting at my computer. Digging words out of my sluggish brain. Trying to make sense of the world at large.

I originally wrote, “the world around me” and only substituted “the world at large” when I realized that world around me makes sense. I look out the window, and I see that the sky is blue, the grass a dry winter green, the streets empty. I hear clucking from chickens a couple of houses away, tapping now and again from the roofers halfway down the block, and a train in the distance. But it’s mostly quiet. Peaceful. When I close my computer, the only tensions I feel are from the book I’m reading, and most of those come because I’m not engaged in the story at all. (I thought I should get away from the Wheel of Time for a while, but going from the study of a multi-layered epic to reading a simple one-note novel, makes that novel feel even flatter than it really is.)

But this isn’t a post about reading. It’s about writing, finding words in my own head rather than in someone else’s, even if the words I find don’t mean a whole lot. It’s about being able to see something to appreciate in my small life and being able to express my feelings. It’s about being centered on what truly matters to me right now rather than worrying so much about things happening elsewhere that I have no control over.

What I do have control over are my words, and I that, I imagine, more than anything, is what makes this current practice of blogging every day important to me. Though to tell the truth, I’m still not sure I want to make my thoughts public. Luckily for me, my tulips are making themselves known, telling me that gardening season is coming, and soon we can both contemplate something more interesting — watching my garden grow.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Moving the World

February 16, 2026 — Pat Bertram

A friend and I recently discussed the Walk for Peace and what we thought would happen now that it’s finished and the monks back home. She thinks it will have a lasting effect and will make a big difference to the world.

Me? Not so much. People tend to get caught up in the spirit of the moment, especially big moments, and they hold on to that feeling of peace or commitment or awe or whatever for a while, but then life happens. And keeps happening. And the feeling that they thought would last forever dissipates and eventually gets put away, only to be remembered long afterward as a curiosity. For sure, some people’s lives were changed. Some people will follow through with the daily affirmation that was handed out during the walk: “Today will be my peaceful day.” Some will practice mindfulness as the monks urged, doing only one thing at a time. Some will even set their phones down for a while and just live in the offline moment.

Those things are important. After all, that was the monks’ message and their hope — that people would find inner peace. But will it change the world in the long run? Interestingly, the monks didn’t set out to change the world. They merely set out mindfully on a walking meditation with no announcement, no big production, no online presence. Just twenty monks walking. (Nineteen human and one canine.) That was it. They thought a few people would pause for a moment to watch and perhaps be moved to find their own inner peace, but they had no expectations beyond placing one foot in front of the other.

And yet people found them. Because of the interest, monks who stayed behind set up a map, websites, social sites, made and uploaded videos. The news of the walk spread, and hundreds of thousands of people stopped their lives to stand by the road and watch the monks walk by. Millions all around the world participated vicariously through videos and live streaming. During those months, there was a vast outpouring of kindness, compassion, harmony, love, and hope. All that energy would have to go somewhere since energy can’t be destroyed, so maybe there was enough power generated to move the world.

I keep thinking about a certain episode in The Wheel of Time books. The weather in their world has gone out of whack due to the Dark One’s effort to destroy the world and even humanity. But a couple of the girl heroes (“witches” some call them) have managed to find the ancient, long-lost bowl the sea faring people once used to control the weather, and these heroes as well as the sea people — Windfinders — get together to change the weather back to the way it’s supposed to be, pouring into the bowl huge amounts of the power only they can wield.

Afterward, they collapsed from exhaustion, but there was no immediate discernible difference in the weather. One of the heroes asks belligerently, “All of that, for what? Did we do anything or not?”

‘The Windfinder struggled to her feet. “Do you think Weaving the Winds is like throwing the helm over on a darter?” she demanded contemptuously. “I just moved the rudder on a skimmer with a beam as broad as the world! He will take time to turn, time to know he is supposed to turn. That he must turn. But when he does, not the Father of Storms himself will be able to stand in his way.”’

Is it possible my friend is right and the walk for peace will have this sort of effect? Is it possible peace will ripple through the world, changing things in ways we can’t even imagine? Maybe in ways we can’t discern but are still subtly effective? Despite my rather cynical view of people, I would like to think the walk for peace will make a difference.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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