 There's a Buddhist saying that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. In other words, pain is what life does to you. Suffering is what you do to yourself. The truth is that everybody suffers. You, me, people we love. Unfortunately, my father, after going bankrupt, could never recover from his suffering. And his broken spirit ended up killing his body. But does it have to be that way? So looking for an answer, I joined a meditation retreat. And then in one of the sessions, they asked us to sit still, completely motionless. And I thought, piece of cake, no problem. Except that 30 minutes into it, this knee began to burn like hell. And I just hated that experience. And it feels like your knees are tearing apart. But I persisted. And then the next day, they served the Mexican food very spicy with jalapeno peppers. But after five days of eating tasteless vegetables, jalapeno peppers were just delicious. And I was gobbling up jalapeno peppers until it dawned on me that those peppers were burning my mouth. That sensation was exactly the same sensation I had with the burning of my knees in meditation. It was absolutely the same sensation. The only thing that differed was that this one I said, good, I want. This one I said, bad, I don't want. It was the same thing. My father had been trapped in these same judgments, wanting what he no longer had, the life before bankruptcy, and not wanting what we had. We were selling chickens for a living. So is there a way out of these judgments? How do we choose not to suffer? Do I convince myself to always want what I have? What if I just had an amputation? Do I tell myself, oh, lovely, just the amputation that I was hoping for? We can choose what we pay attention to, whether we pay attention to what's happening now or we pay attention to what's in our memories, or something that is very dangerous, the comparison between the two. Do I want it? Do I not? Do other people have more than I do? So how do we choose better? And here's one odd thing that helped me, helped me a lot, which was watching people eat. And in Asia, I saw many groups of people, they eat without talking too much to each other. And as a Brazilian, I thought, this is so sad. I mean, these people, they have no thoughts to share with each other. And I said, what is this? But after a while, I began to realize that, or began to think that maybe these people are not talking because they're paying attention to what they're eating. Actually, if you could hear my thoughts, I'm always eating and speaking with my mouth full. And so actually, they had better internal manners and suffering is the result of bad mental manners. So if you're spending time with your kids but thinking about the board meeting, that's really bad manners. If you're eating and thinking about an insult from three years ago, that's really bad manners too. Or if you're with your girlfriend and thinking how your ex was much cuter, that's really bad manners. So here's a little reminder for you. Next time you're sitting down at a table, remember to have good mental manners. Because that simple act will begin to change what you do to yourself when life serves you some jalapeno peppers. Thank you.