Can One Question Change Everything?
Treehouse Treasures & the Tree of Serendipity: Finding True Happiness
There's a particular kind of magic that happens when a book falls open to exactly the page it wants you to read. That's how today's Treehouse Treasures pick found me — I didn't choose it so much as it chose itself, landing open to page 99 like it had been waiting there all along.
The book is Finding True Happiness: Satisfying Our Restless Hearts by Robert Spitzer. And before I even got to the passage itself, I turned to the inside cover and found a note I'd written back in May 2018: this book was a gift from Bill Murray.
Not that Bill Murray — though in my world, he was even more famous. My Bill Murray was a client from back when I owned my little hair salon. For years, I cut his hair every month, and somewhere in all those appointments, a real friendship grew. He'd come in and his wife would settle onto the bench outside with a book of her own, and she'd always pop in to say hello. Such a lovely couple.
Bill had spent much of his career in hospital administration — something like a national director of operations — and by the time I knew him, he was mostly consulting. But what I remember most isn't his title. It's how deeply spiritual he was, how much he laughed, and how genuinely curious he stayed about other people. We came from different backgrounds and different spiritual homes, but he met every conversation with an open mind and a caring heart. I used to block out extra time for his appointments because we always ended up somewhere rich and unexpected in our talks. There was an ease to him — a kind of light-hearted presence that made an hour feel like no time at all.
It's been eight years since he gave me this book, and it’s been a while since I opened it. And, I’m so pleased that this is our book today! Thanks Bill!
What the Page Had to Say
The passage draws on the philosopher Gabriel Marcel's idea that you can't look for the good news and the bad news in someone at the same time — one crowds out the other. And because our default setting tends to hunt for the bad news, that's usually what we find.
Spitzer's invitation is a gentle one: start small. Notice a few good things in a person, even amid real irritation. Let yourself smile — because the act of smiling can actually begin to shift your inner state. And then offer the other person something small and positive, even if it feels minor. That one shift, he writes, is often the difference between a relationship that erodes and one that grows — between mutual destruction and mutual complementarity.
It's such a simple instruction, and yet it asks for real courage — to override the instinct to catalogue what's wrong, and instead go looking, on purpose, for what's good.
Why This Felt So Apropos
This is exactly the spirit behind a little companion book I’m writing on the Nervous System — the idea that we don't need a total overhaul to change the shape of our lives or our relationships. This is a great source of relief to me and I imagine for you too.
Finding this passage today, in a book gifted by a man who embodied exactly that kind of warmth and curiosity toward others, felt like more than coincidence. It felt like the tree of serendipity doing what it does best — handing me precisely the reminder I needed, wrapped in a memory of someone who lived it so naturally.
So here's my little invitation to you, straight from page 99: today, go looking for the good news in someone. Just one person. Notice one small, real thing about them. Smile. Say it out loud. See what shifts.
Thank you for spending this time in the Treehouse with me. Until next time — keep climbing and discover the treasures that are within and all around.
May All Beings Be Free. May All Beings Be Happy. May All Beings find Peace and Joy in their Hearts.
