How to build a snowman

First you have to have snow!  Lots and lots of snow!  And it has to be just the right kind or you don't have a prayer, so a world class snowman kind of starts up in heaven, or the heavens, depending on your point of view.

It takes patience. You can't start just as soon as you see snow.  Start too early and you won't get a top notch snowman.

In the beginning you start with a handful of pristine virgin snow.  Then you carefully shape it and  begin rolling it around.  Be careful.  It matters where you roll it.  In the wrong places you will pick up more muck than good stuff.  This is the foundation.  What happens here is important!

The next ball starts out the same way.  Deep inside this ball is the snowman's heart, amazingly big and warm for the cold world it lives in.  Shape with care!

Last, but not least, is the head, a seemingly small part of the whole, but important none the less.  What you put here makes the difference between a Frosty and a sad little blob of slush and ice at the end of the season.  A good head is necessary even when there are no shoulders!

Your choice of hat is really up to you.  Put it on his head then step back and wait.  If he speaks to your head, or heart, and you begin to dance around, you have succeeded!

Fever

I wake up warm.  It's a tropical paradise.  I feel the sun beating down on me and then I open my eyes to the darkness.  It is the middle of the night and the full moon glances off the snow blanketing the trees.  I think the furnace must be set too high, but it is sixty six degrees in here.  But I turn it down more.

Getting up I stumble down hill to the bathroom.  There is a center point in this house somewhere in the hallway as if gravity had a drawstring there pulling it all together and deeper down..  It makes everyone feel a little off balance, a bit surreal, but it is simple reality.  The house sags.

I'm sagging too.  I dream of being a child, of dogs threatening me, of impossible tasks that leave me exhausted in my sleep.  It is cold and I finally realize I have kicked the covers off.

Pulling them back up I snuggle down in my pillows and dream I am walking up hill in the snow.  It is so deep and I am so tired.

I wake up hot and the room is freezing.

There isn't only one

My first love was my daddy.  I had an engagement ring that matched my mother's and I was so proud of it, so attached to it that when it slid down the drain while I was washing my hands I was totally devastated.  My father took the whole lavatory apart to retrieve it for me.  I was three.

My first friend was Paul, the big boy across the street.  He was four and had a stick horse I loved to ride.  We moved away shortly after I met him and I dreamed of him for a very long time.  There was quite a procession of loves after that.  My best friend all through school, the one I rode bikes with, played chess with, swam with.  The boys I went to proms and dances with.  My very own first dog that I named Ninna (my baby name) and who was really my first child. One of my college roommates.

I remember all the years I yearned for a child thinking it was never to be, and the unbelievable love I felt when I gazed at that tiny bundle who would be my first son.  I never could have believed how immense my feelings would be, how overwhelmingly in love I was and still am -- with him and his brother and sister.

There are so many kinds of love, but somehow the world seems to relegate them all to something less than the love between a man and a woman and that is a great loss to us all.

Love is love.  It may be great or small, fickle, or deep, but its strength is all that separates it from all the other kinds of love. 

Feelings that make the heart weep with joy, that make it stand up and sing when the beloved is near in thought, word, deed, or body, are no less valid just because they are not exclusively between a grown up man and a grown up woman.

If you have love in your life you are among the most blessed people on earth.  Cherish it. 

The apprentice

Feelings float in the breath of a moment.  One word,
one glance, one thought can change the trajectory
of a lifetime.  We are so full of power.  Like baby
wizards we go around pointing our fingers and
whispering commands without any idea of the magic
we possess.  Igniting fires in the eyes and hearts of some
and extinguishing it in others. I want to learn
the language of the heart, hear the truth behind it
and take control of my own power.

A pound of flesh

I opened the cupboard.  I
was hungry for something.  I wasn't sure what
it was, but I scanned the shelves.  Searching
for whatever would fill me up, flesh me out and I
reached for the crackers because I
could use them to sop up my
tears.

"Today is tomorrow yesterday"

In this moment is now, is reality, is forever, but it is only forever right now.  In another moment this is only history and so the ultimate challenge is to live now knowing it is one tiny, infinitesimal piece of history.

Living it fully and to the best of my ability is important, partly because it IS history and partly because it is now, the foundation of forever.

The nicest thing anyone ever said to me was, " I love you more than I want this job."  In the context of the moment it was so sweet, but in history it became a foundation for infinite self worth. 

This moment has no idea what its descendants will be like and neither do I.  I only know that they will be right and rich and part of my history -- and maybe part of yours too, so I need to live each one to the fullest and then find a way to let it go, let it grow into whatever it is supposed to be.

All seeds grow up to be what they are, given a chance.

The Illusion

I am with you.

I have heard those words so many times that they could be meaningless, only they aren't. 

We are connected in ways I will never understand, sometimes it seems almost magical and sometimes it doesn't seem possible, but it is true.

For one thing there is always that pebble in a pond effect, one small act of any sort has ramifications the creator could never even imagine, good or bad.

And then there is the old idea of a "split apart," or "twin," or "soul mate" who feels what the other one feels, thinks what the other one thinks.  I've experienced that too.

Just because I can't dissect it or replicate it, doesn't mean it isn't real.  It is.

I am with you whether I want to be, whether I like the idea, or not.

Sometimes I do like it.  Very much.  I like the idea that I do not walk alone on this earth, that freedom does not mean my heart is lost in some vast empty space waiting to be caught and confined before it is filled.

I like the thought that there are strings so long we can never be separated.  That you can fill me up with an umbilical attached to a life so rich and beautiful I am almost always satisfied.  I like you.

Wherever we go, whatever we do, whoever we are with, we are never alone. 

Aloneness is an illusion.

Unsung heroes

First responders are important, but they only get the ball rolling.  It takes a while to get through tough places and back on the road after a crisis.

People flock to the forefront with cards and flowers and good wishes, but shortly thereafter the cards are packed away, the flowers wilt and the wishes become echoes in the wind.  They were only band aids used to get past the initial shock.

The real pain sets in later when the empty place at dinner becomes the center of the table, or holiday pictures are woefully incomplete.  The world becomes a string of potholes just waiting to swallow up unsuspecting survivors.

And that is when the unsung heroes step up.  Silently listening.  Quietly standing in, knowing they are only place holders until the holes begin to heal.  Ready to do the little things, the hard things, the unnoticed, but absolutely essential things that make life bearable and worth living.

Steadfast and sure, these are the ones who stay long after the music stops and everyone else goes home.

The handprint on the wall

The handwriting on my wall is generally not much more than finger paint.  So when I dreamed of water three times in one night and had a fishy recollection this afternoon I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

First I dreamed of a fish out of water.  Literally, this fish jumped out of the water and sat up on its tail like a begging dog!  I knew it was stalking the other two animals in the dream, a beautiful peacock and a slinky black cat. I thought I should do something, but I didn't know what.

Next I dreamed about a young sea turtle caught in an aquarium where it might be too cold to survive, but in the end, when I tried to save it, it bit my ankles and I decided it had been there long enough to be safe.

Finally I was in my own house, but the entire lower level was flooded with three feet of water.  It was ruining the house.

In my dreams, basements usually represent the future, something that hasn't yet occurred, so there is hope.

I think my dream is telling me the hand print is on the wall and the fingers are all pointing up.  Just keep swimming and all will be well.

Who are the people in your neighborhood

Family is important, but in my life there were other people equally as important while I was growing up.  People who weren't even really related to me, but only neighbors. 

The first was Aunt Jo and Uncle Ralph who lived next door to us from the time I was five until we moved away in sixth grade.  They weren't my real aunt and uncle, but back then that is what you called older people if you didn't say Mrs., or Mr..  Uncle Ralph was really my youngest brother's surrogate dad.  He taught him almost everything from how to live to how to hunt and Aunt Jo bought me my first bra.  They didn't have children of their own, but they had children who came to visit that we played with and one was my best friend through high school.

After we moved I met Miss Condell, a woman who was in her nineties and lived alone in the house next door to our new house.  Her home was a museum and her brother actually donated many things from his travels to the Illinois State Museum.  Today you can go back and visit the house they grew up in, but back then she was just a fascinating woman who took me into her world and told me stories about all the magical things in her house.

We moved many times, but just before my senior year in high school we moved to another town.  It was my mother's home town and I had lots of relatives there but it was still a wrench.  I spent a lot of time driving back and forth to be with my old best friend in Springfield and much of the rest with women who worked for my grandmother.  One of those was Millie Murphy, a woman who grew up in a log cabin, married a man from the Ozarks and had a very dramatic life.  She cooked friend green tomatoes before the movie, harvested a field of corn with me standing behind the tractor to weight down the picker, and her husband and son played country music and danced the old way in the evenings.

Millie taught me that it was possible to live a long and useful life even after losing her husband and all three of her children.  She made living alone simply an extension of life that was different.  Millie was a survivor.  She was strong!

Of course I had people in my family who taught me many important things too.  I was surrounded by strong women and my father, but these people outside it, who had no reason to take an interest in me, made a huge impression.

The boy who kissed his dog on the nose

Once upon a time, in the mists of tomorrow, a boy kissed his dog upon the nose and set out to have an adventure in the world. He put on his newest underwear, tied his shoes especially carefully, packed his bag and took off.

He rode the wind through rain and lightning, sunshine and clouds until he came to a faraway land and there he landed in a roaring storm. 

The villagers were waiting for him.  They said there had been a sign that something immense was about to happen, some event so huge that it would change the world.  And the boy was afraid.

He did not want the world to change.  He just wanted a simple adventure, something he could tell his grandchildren about when his bones were old and cold.

But the people ushered him into the castle and presented him to the King who was having a very bad day. The royal tutor had left and his wife was irate.  The royal story teller had left with him and the children were bored.  The castle was in an uproar.  The King had no time for a boy who kissed his dog on the nose and landed in a puddle of water.

Still, everyone had to eat and that is how they all found themselves sitting across the table from each other.  A King, a boy, an angry Queen, ten bored children, and a bunch of excited villagers.  It was terrible!  The boy thought about all the stories he had read and wondered if he would ever be able to write one about this that would impress those distant grandchildren.

Thinking out loud he began mumbling and suddenly the child next to him was listening raptly.  He talked about the authenticity of adventures and how the monsters changed shape so that sometimes they were barely recognizable as monsters!  He spoke of heroes who fought with weapons no one could see!  He painted pictures with words that wound history and fancy into such a compelling piece that soon everyone was listening to the boy who kissed his dog goodbye and arrived on the wings of a storm.

When dinner was over the King asked the boy to become both the tutor to his children and the storyteller for the kingdom!  The boy accepted and that day went down in the annals of the kingdom as a most fortuitous day, a day when one small kingdom was changed by a boy who kissed his dog on the nose and set off to have an adventure.

And who knows, maybe he did change the world.  Only time will tell.

Happiness is

There is no greater honor than being allowed to help someone I admire and respect.

I don't mind putting in the time and the effort.  I only worry that I may not be up to the task.  I don't want to be the weak link that causes a problem.

I guess I just have to trust that people are wise enough to know who is helping and hope they take my shortcomings into account.

Tonight I go to bed happier than I've been in a long time. Happiness is still being a helper -- just like it was in Kindergarten.

The circle goes on

People want such different things from life. Most people seem to want pretty much what their parents did, or at least they did before television. And now many of them end up doing similar things anyway because that is what they know.

Of course books expand the world, but in the world I grew up in there were readers and there were the rest of the people.  I knew people who only had two books in their house, a Bible and a phone book and the Bible was problematic.

Our house was divided.  Not against itself, but into readers of books and readers of magazines and newspapers.  Sunday morning saw the paper divided into sections, Dear Abby, comics, sports, obituaries, editorials, front page.  Various magazines were piled next to chairs in the living room, Life, Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic.  Various others were hidden in the linen closet behind the bathroom.  None were forbidden, some were just meant to be read more discreetly.  My father's library was never off limits either.  I could read anything in there, but he had the option of discussing it with me and he exercised that frequently.

Actually it was a pretty well rounded world.  I miss it.

Conversations were as much a part of my childhood as eating dinner or riding in the car.  Both of those times were chances to engage in topics that tickled my imagination and broadened my views.  I miss those too.

Politics were discussed, loudly and passionately, but there was so much more!  Everything from the Rosetta stone and the crown jewels, to Hegel and Tesla,  mixed in with Grimm's fairy tales and Frank Baum.  I might read the Sunday comics at breakfast, discuss William Blake at lunch and listen to a dissertation on Plato and Socrates at dinner.  I read about the Beatles in Playboy.

Life was diverse.

Then came the lean years, when conversations were sparse and mostly perfunctory ones about people, politics and religion and the world became smaller and smaller. I lived among people, but of a different species who spoke a different language in a different culture and I was starving.

Funny how living alone opened the door to a banquet I never dared to dream of for years and years.  Now my day can begin and end with the most fascinating conversations and in between I find so many wonderful things to occupy my time, all of them appreciated, that I sometimes wonder if I am only dreaming.

I am finding what I want in life and it really isn't too far from what my father wanted.  Isn't that interesting?

Crutches

I keep a chart of my eating and exercise habits.  For a year I have written my weight at the top, my blood pressure under that and under this I put what I do for exercise for the day followed by what I eat.

I am careful what I read.  All it takes is one article saying you need to go for the burn, or do thirty minutes of arm exercises, or walk, at least, four miles if you can't run and I feel like giving up.  I do give up! 

I hear how hard it is for people "my age" to lose weight and I think, "Right!"

The truth is:  it isn't any harder now than it ever was, but I can't buy in to all the extremes or I quit.  Yesterday I wrote on my chart:  Weight - alot!  BP - I don't know.  Exercise - shop! Food - Eat!

Now that is an extreme I can buy into way too easily.

So what do I do?

I start over.  I did this already and I know where to turn for encouragement.  The person who has done all this with me still stands beside me cheering and listening and commiserating.  That is my biggest crutch, the one thing that keeps me going.

Heartfelt reflections

All of my senses work through a network of censors created and honed by years of training and experience.

Depending upon my ability to speak to your censors I can communicate what I see and hear, feel and think to you -- sometimes.

The reality is so far from perfect that it is scary.  I am amazed that we connect at all.

Even people growing up in the same family experience life in such diverse ways that it is difficult for me to believe they know each other, let alone come from the same litter.

You can judge a dog by its breed and have a pretty good idea of what to expect, but not people, at least not the people I have met.  Everyone seems to be an exception and if that isn't true, it usually turns out I don't really know them that well.

Some people have thicker facades than others, but it's the core I'm looking for.  How do you look when you see the miracle of life unfolding around you?  What happens when you are stressed out?  It's the extremes that skin us alive and bring out our inner being.  It takes a while for that to show up.

Lots of people reach out and grab my heart, but I only trust a few of them. The others only see themselves reflected in my eyes.

In for the count

Success breeds success.  Everyone loves a winner.  Quotes on success are rampant, but maybe the most valid one I can remember is this:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill

It is easy to start something and even easier to accept the accolades and praise that come with success, but after a year, even though there is still a ton of work to be done, it becomes more difficult to keep it up.

I am not a creature of habit.  I do best when on a routine, but routines don't come naturally to me.  I am sure this accounts for the fact that I am not a retired millionaire traveling and living the beautiful life.  I don't lack potential, but I do lack that dogged perseverance that truly successful people have.

I seem to succeed at everything I try.  For a while. 

Then I slip away and move on to something else and all that other work is lost and the question is this:  Did I lose interest in what I was doing before, or was I beginning to fail at it and quit before that could be proven?  Either way the results are the same. 

I lose.

I am determined not to let that happen this time.  I have spent almost a year losing weight and getting into shape.  It has given me so many rewards, almost like leaping into a fountain of youth and emerging thirty years younger.   Surely with results like that I can find a way to keep on track.

Faberge eggs

Imagine riding on a huge wooden tricycle that looks like a dinosaur!  It has a long tail dragging along behind it.  A long neck to hold onto and peddles attached to where the ribs should be.  Really more of a wooden skeleton with a brontosaurus head, it is huge, probably twelve feet long and so heavy that peddling it uphill wears me out. 

I finally just give up and go to get married!  I found some sparkly makeup that made me look young and dewy and when I saw my reflection in the walls I looked like a Marie Osmond doll!  I had plenty of time to look because it was a very long walk.  Instead of going down the aisle, I went down a shiny winding tunnel to Disney World, escorted by a woman whose job it was to talk me into the marriage.

In the end I had a choice, my ex or Ralph Fiennes.  I wasn't thrilled with either, so I looked around for my dinosaur trike.

Dreams!  Sometimes I think my subconscious would be fine without me.  It seems to have a life of its own that covers all the details.  This body with its limitations and hang ups only gets in the way.  I'm kind of like an old suitcase with Faberge eggs packed inside.  Except some of the eggs are a bit cracked and all of them are seconds.

Still......

How do I know

I read and hope and dream.  I do my best to follow all the good advice and ignore the rest.  I try to seek out my better side and encourage it to grow while sublimating the darker one, but life is filled with light and shadow and both add something to the whole picture.

I see so many people living life by elimination.  They consume everything until it becomes too painful, or begins to poison them, or consume them, then sometimes they back off and do something different.  And sometimes they learn to eliminate things sooner and sometimes they become afraid to even try things at all.

I see people pick and choose so carefully that they never really get a good mouthful of anything.  Nibbling at success and failure with such tiny timid bites that they can't really tell the difference. 

And I wonder, how do I tell the difference:  between living life with gusto and simply gorging, between sanctified simplicity and terror?

Windows

Life was a caterpillar when I was young.  Naps crawled along for days and the Easter bunny took a million years to come back.  I thought I went to school half a year and summer lasted the other half! 

It went a little faster by the time I got to college.  My professor only gave us a moment to read The Bear and papers were due almost before they were assigned.

My children came along and the caterpillar turned into a honey bee dripping with sweetness and zipping from flower to flower so quickly I barely had time to appreciate the fragrance before I had to move on.

Later on hard times magnified by a bug's eyes took on catastrophic proportions, but sheer determination got me through.

Now I float gently along buffeted by the wind and warmed by the sun.  Some days I am grateful and others I bang my head against that invisible barrier before me, but always I keep going.

Until one day I suppose someone will open a window and I'll slip silently into the next phase. Maybe I will be planted then and grow up.

Being me

In every life there is a theme that runs from beginning to end.

It may be loud and clear, blatantly out there for everyone to see from the get go.  Or, it may be as subtle as the scent of honeysuckle far down the mountain, but whatever it is, I am meant to follow it.

Sometimes a parent just puts their child in the car and they whiz off into a future carved out of generations of experience.  Sometimes people need to be nudged along a yellow brick road.  And sometimes it is only a deer path in the woods, hidden by flowers and full of quicksand in unlikely places, but wherever it is I have to go if it is my way.

I've always heard that I choose my own path, but that's not really true.  I only choose the way I choose to travel it.  The path itself is part of my DNA.  I can no more be a deer than a lion can be a human.

Unlike the deer and the lion, I can choose to be something I was never meant to be and that is the surest road to disaster that I can think of.

That mythical deer in the headlights is a tragic figure and so is an elephant in a china shop.  A barrel of monkeys is really no fun at all, they are only chattering and shrieking trying to get out.  And a human being living a life that makes them miserable is a crime against nature.

Learning who I am and cherishing it so that I am free to follow my own path is one of life's biggest challenges.  I guess that's why human beings live so long.  Unlike the deer and the lion we have lots of choices and most of us are a bit baffled by it.  It can take a long time to be me.

Happiness is

Everyone dreams differently.  What I want others wouldn't have if it were handed to them on a plate and vice versa.

That's the fine art of living, taking the day dreams I nibbled on during long boring lectures and lazy afternoons at twelve and turning them into concrete experiences.  It couldn't happen in my twenties because I hadn't even had time to taste the appetizers in life yet, but by the time sixty appeared?

Dessert was on the table!

It didn't cost much cause it was homemade and that's why it was so perfect.  Custom made exactly for my life.  That's the secret to happiness, I think.

Being happy with what is.

Images

Face scrubbed, clean and simple.  What an image!

Why should that be such a radical look for a woman today?  We have come to expect perfection in everyone, even if it is only surface level perfection, air-brushed manufactured perfection.  This is considered better than plain old bare faced truth.

I read an article where it said that women who were not wearing makeup were considered more likely to be difficult to get along with. To me it means she is more comfortable with herself, perhaps even more confident.  Why should that be a bad thing?  Why would it make her more difficult than a man who presented himself just as he is?

People used to gawk at the National Geographic articles showing folks wearing tattoos and jewelry that altered their bodies.  We considered them aboriginal and "native."  We considered ourselves much more "civilized" and yet we alter our bodies too, just in different ways. 

I can see where altering my looks with paint or piercings, or unusual clothing might be considered less than desirable if it is distracting.  Businesses have a right to expect their employees to fit their company image.  Although I have no problem with makeup or jewelry, I just don't want to work for someone who finds my normal face offensive.  To me that is uncivilized, or at the very least, insensitive.

I prefer to work with people who are grounded on values that are important to me.  Honesty.  Compassion.  Real awareness.  Perhaps even creativity, imagination, or resourcefulness.

I find an image based on hard work, simple confidence and wisdom reassuring and comforting.  I am more likely to trust these people.

My child

         The Children's Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,
     When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
     That is known as the Children's Hour...

....And there I will keep you forever,
     Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
     And moulder in dust away!

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You have been my child forever.  Nothing can ever change that.

The plain and simple truth

Nothing is ever quite what it seems.

I noticed this as a very young child and it gave me nightmares.  I used to dream that people I knew weren't really who I thought they were.

Childish imagination?  Paranoia?  Intuition?  Or maybe just the simple truth.

I still am acutely uncomfortable when someone is hiding something and the surest way to lose my company is to lie to me.  It doesn't matter how good the reason, it shatters my trust.

I have lived with half truths and outright lies so much of my life.  Some people use them to avoid confrontation and it will do that for me.  I simply don't want to confront you or deal with you at all if you can't be honest with me.

My favorite uncle turned out to be a CIA agent.  That was why he was gone all the time.  I discovered that after he was dead.  I suppose he had to keep it a secret, but I always wondered where he went when he was gone.

My god father was an English professor by day (and an opera playboy by night and summer!)  I didn't know about the latter until I was quite grown up.

Someone nearer and dearer was not who I thought either and that was such a painful experience. 

Never again. 

I want plain old simple honesty.  I can deal with a little honest pain, but I can't deal with subterfuge. 

Just like I did

I am starting to get a feel for my own writing, for what is good and what is not so good.

Of course the danger in that is egotism.  There is a fine line between confidence and hubris.

I remember the older people whose long drawn out talks drove me nuts as a child and teenager and I remember the pontificating that made me roll my eyes as a very young adult.

Later on I learned that instead of rolling my eyes, or thinking about how I would counter their words if I dared, it was better to listen; listen and sift out those things that meant something to me.  There is always something to be learned even if it is what not to do.

Still, there is also a line between false humility and fear.  The fear that I may think my work is better than someone else thinks is well founded.  In fact, it's a fact.  There will always be people who don't like what I have to say.  I can't be bound by them either.

I read something the other day that basically said, only I can be me and if I don't do that, whatever I have to offer is lost.  That is something to think about.

I have to put myself out there, be me, make mistakes and let others take what is worth keeping in their opinion.  Just like I did.

Doing not doing

It occurs to me that strong willed means more than bullying my way through life.  For me it often means just the opposite.

Learning to NOT say what I am thinking, Not do what I'd like to do, Not act the way I feel in the moment.

Not doing is often the hardest thing of all.

In every respect.

Doing Not doing is a meditation that was very difficult for me to learn.  Letting go of everything and allowing the emptiness, the wholeness, the sanity and sanctity of the universe to persevere is a true art and one I am far from perfecting.

It is the basis of patience and reasonable living.  It is reality in its purest form.

It is where I learn more about myself than anywhere else if I care to pay attention.

Strong willed works for and against me.

Strong willed

"There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.  When she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid."  I seemed to hear that every day as a toddler and child.  I was a difficult child, a bull headed child, a stubborn child.

I was also a  bright child.  I soon learned to acquiesce to my superiors.  Then I was called, "a good girl."  And I was good.  Most children are truly good, but some of us feel compelled to do what we really believe is right.  I was a strong willed child.

And I am still strong willed.  Once I really believe, it is hard to stop me.  I am not engineered to yield no matter how much I might want to and I do want to.  I love peace even more than I hate discord.  I will go out of my way to do something without making waves or rocking the boat.  But if the boat must be rocked....

I will rock it.

Because of and in spite of...

Life has a way of filling in the gaps.

Put a plant in the ground and it grows towards the light.  Allow a person to be what they are and do what they do best and they will thrive as much as they possibly can.

I do not know what the future holds in store for me.  I only know what fills me with joy and I have to believe that is the thing I am meant to do.

Happy people seem to live longer, be healthier, do more good to the world around them.

I'm not talking about hedonistic ecstasy, just plain old joyful content.

If I am unhappy it comes through in everything I do and touch. 

I am not the center of the universe, but I am the center of my universe.  I just do the best I can and the world will do likewise.

Because of me, or in spite of me, life goes on.