Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff.

Many years ago when I was being trained at the VA hospital and Sepulveda, California, I had the opportunity to work with a lot of people who are having very difficult lives.

And I think many of us, if we just heard about them and what they had done or how they

were acting, we wouldn't like them. We would judge them and we would

have a lot of animosity for the choices they had made in life. But one of the benefits of working there was I got to get to know these people,

talk to them, spend time with them, and find out about their story. These men and women had made choices that put them in our culture at the bottom of the barrel.

They were living on the street, they were drug addicts, alcoholics, they were in and out of prison.

They had made very poor choices in their lives.

So that our culture, people that I knew, including me, judge them, and we judge them harshly.

But thankfully, I got to spend two years working there,

and more than just knowing what they've done to hurt themselves and others, I got to know their whole story, their background.

And what I found was, when I really took the time to know these people, there was a story.

And more importantly, once I've heard their story, I learned to love them. I wasn't trying to excuse her behavior and say what they

did didn't matter. It did. They hurt people. Often they hurt a lot of people, but when I really took the time to hear their story,

I realize that their story didn't take away from them being people worthy of love.

It more importantly helped me understand how they got there and how they ended up making these choices that hurt a lot of people,

including themselves, but by listening to their story, I learned to love them.

And I'm so thankful for that time.

One man, let's call him Joe.

He was just such an angry bitter man. Anytime I met with him, he'd always say,

I hate my life, I want to die, I just want to die and he was never smiling. He was always angry at everyone and himself and the

main words that came out of his mouth were I just want to die. I just want to die. I remember when I was

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