"You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom.
Thus, my first impulse upon opening "Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing" (Riverhead), by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, was to light some incense and put on the sitar music; it all sounded very Eastern.
Even authors of severely pessimistic books, such as the book "Ecclesiastes" in the Jewish Testament, rebuke suicide because they know that we learn from tribulation and become more open to greater wisdom, even if that greater wisdom also carries a burden of some sorrow.
I usually defer to their wisdom, open a bottle and ask them to tell me what they think.
My recent book, Hallowed Secularism, envisions an expanding secular movement that is open to the wisdom and power of religion.
Obviously we need to find a viable and affordable replacement to fill the void left by an absence of those desperately needed, reality-avoiding, delicious and fun drugs that God, in his (open to discussion) wisdom, has seen fit to shower upon us.
But if we keep our hearts open to the wisdom that Sam gathered in his short life, we can hear him inspiring us to transform our life for the better: to take care of one another, to make someone laugh, to dance like you just don't care, to keep coming back, to plunge into the water and ride that wave.
His autobiography, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, opens with a love poem "To SA".
The loss of his kindness and good cheer, his strength and wisdom opens for us an abyss of unending loss.
