This week I choose to not be right (and find beauty in a field beyond right and wrong).

Ever been stuck in a toxic relationship rut? I mean really stuck.

Perhaps it was with a spouse, a partner, or your boss or neighbour.  An issue arises, they react aggressively, you react just as primitively to their reaction, and so on and on in a spiral of right versus wrong.  Soon, you’ve both sunk into a festering quagmire of codependent hurt. You might know better than to descend like this; perhaps you’ve had therapy. But each time the scab’s knocked off the wound, you retaliate like an old lizard. You’re that stuck.

It’s rotten, this quagmire. Blame and shame turn rancid very quickly. And the detritus of old pain gets awfully sticky and suck-holey. So it’s hard to leave, or to shift the energy in a new direction.

But what if there was another path?

I’m off to New York this morning. So posts will be a little thin for a bit. Perhaps.

I’m off to New York to interview a few people for my column and to start writing my book, which will all happen in the New York State Library (the one in which Carrie was meant to get married to Big in the movie; and where they filmed Ghostbusters….and countless other movies). Seems bizarre to travel all that way to sit in a library. But I reckon it’s going to work.

I love New York. It’s a place where things happen. And where you can extend yourself.  Everyone tries to put their finger on why the place gels, including Alisha Keys and Jay-Z.

Earlier this week a bank ran a social experiment with a money tree (but it doesn’t grow on them, right?). It pinned thousands of dollars to a tree in the city and then filmed how people responded. In many respects it reflected what goes on internally for all of us when dealing with anything to do with money. But it also shows how assumed behaviour can be distorted when we’re faced with blatant generosity.

The PR who put on the stunt sent me a few observations which made me smile: