I spent 15 years locked into the darkest sort of disillusionment imaginable, and during that entire time I awoke each and every morning filled with a heavy sense of dread and despair - an "O Shit, another day" attitude. I had no idea that it stemmed from my suppression of my Vietnam experiences. I just thought it was middle age. My mind kept going back to my First Sergeant in Korea, who'd parade up and down before us grunts hunkered in a trench preaching, . . . "Life, gentlemen, is a shit sandwich, and everyday you WILL take a bite, and some days you WILL eat the whole thing! The secret of life, therefore, is to learn to LOVE the taste of shit!"

I concluded that son-of-a-bitch had broken the code, unraveled a deep mystery of the human condition and left it to resonate in my mind for years.

During most of those 15 years I had no idea such a malady as PTSD even existed. All I knew was that I felt alienated from my native land, filled with a rage I couldn't begin to fathom or understand, isolated, anguished, fearful, paranoid, cold as ice inside, uncaring, unfeeling, unloved and unlovable, thirsting for vengeance, filled with resentment, bitterness, and despair.

I felt like I was 800 years old, that life held no further attraction for me, that I had seen it all and done it all, and all I was left with was a backpack full of resentment. Sound familiar? If it does, and if you still feel some of those "delightful residuals" from Vietnam, cheer up. There's hope!

The Law of Growth helped me come to grips with my own thoughts. Simply put, the law is : What You Think Upon Grows." This is an eastern maxim, and it sums up neatly the greatest and most fundamental of all the laws of the mind.

What you think upon grows! Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your own life. Whether the subject of your thought be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what you do not use atrophies.

The more you think about your grievances or the injustices that you have suffered, the more such trials will you continue to receive. The more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you.

This is the basic, fundamental, all-inclusive law of mind, and actually all psychological and metaphysical teaching is little more than commentary upon this. What you think upon grows!

Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think upon these things!

Naomi Campbells' bare breasts were scratched out of a recent issue of Paris Match magazine (the French version of Life magazine) by Hanoi's zealous customs agents. Border guards are conducting frenzied searches of incoming parcels, confiscating videotapes of prime-time American television shows as part of another one of those inexplicable communist tendencies to "eradicate social evils!"

Reminds me of the puritanical zeal of our own overzealous forefathers in New England who rooted out "evil," burned witches in the process, and expelled from their midst all who disagreed with them.

As an indicator of Hanoi's passion to preserve its pure culture, Big Brother staged a public burning of videos and pornographic western decay in downtown Hanoi recently. They've also blamed the increases in crime, the spread of AIDs, and the failure of kids in school on this assault on traditional values by the hedonistic Western culture. A Ministry of Culture mouthpiece gloated, "This campaign is very necessary. In fact, it should have taken place sooner. It is the right time to make pure again our cultural life." Give me a break! Sounds like the religious right in America.

To carry their nonsense a step farther, loudspeakers in Hanoi recently began blaring warnings about "poisonous corruption" of Vietnamese culture. Big Brother bellows, "Don't use pornographic films! Don't use opium! Don't gamble!" The campaign is actually aimed at the homegrown sex industry in Hanoi and Saigon. Big Brother's SWAT teams have been raiding and busting video shops in the big cities, which rent pirated copies of American videos. They're grabbing off the shelves any and all videos which do not carry the official seal of Hanoi's censors in what only can be described as a typical response of Asia to the West, wherein we're somehow responsible for all the whores and bars in Asia. Lighten Up, Hanoi!