I haven’t always been the perfect person and although I’ve tried my best, there were many missteps along the way. There is no one who cringes at who they were more than the person I am today, but that’s okay.

Because tomorrow I’ll shake my head at the person I was yesterday.

Life is a series of constant growth cycles, fueled by experience and hard earned wisdom. I have nothing left to prove, yet I’m still striving to improve.

If you wouldn’t give me a chance before, can you give me a chance today?

I’d hate for you to judge me on a person who is no longer here.

Trees can talk with each other.

While it makes for interesting scientific study and certainly an excellent episode of “The Magic School Bus,” there’s something much bigger at play. When a tree is in trouble, it sends a signal to other trees through a fungi system and in return, those trees use their root systems to send nutrients and antibodies to help. It’s a symbiotic system where everyone is working together to protect each other and help each other thrive.

And the more trees that are around, the more they can help each other out.

What a remarkable fact of nature:
Trees do a better job of helping each other out than humans do.

It’s easier now, more than ever, to build our own interconnected support network so that we may have abundance in our own lives. Take it from the trees—it seems to work.

Your innocence is replaced with skepticism.
Your playfulness is replaced with pragmatism.
Your sense of awe is replaced with regret.
Joy is replaced with worry.
Curiosity is replaced with indifference.
Adventure is replaced with routine.
Trust is replaced with fear.

You would think that with all the wisdom we gain over the years, we would recognize what’s destroying our happiness. It’s time to be young at heart again.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had certainty in our lives?

The certainty to know which decisions are the right ones, which beliefs are truthful and which actions are the best, would make life a whole lot easier. Yet, all of life is struggling between this contention of seeking it while never having it fully.

Which is why it’s concerning when people live and think as if they have already achieved this certainty that could never be had, or people who burn out trying to achieve it.

The problem of certainty is that it keeps us complacent. It never challenges us or pushes us beyond our comfort zones. It lulls us into a stagnation of the mind and life.

We can never know for certain whether what we do, say or think is the right way, so let’s stop pretending.

If you have to ask, then it’s probably best to dig further for a better one.

Should you still wish to proceed, be prepared for the consequences that caused you to hesitate in the first place. Chances are, you’re going to get exactly what you thought.

Charles E. Benham created a disc that demonstrates how easily your brain can be tricked into seeing something that’s not there.

What’s interesting is even though you know the colours are an illusion, no amount of rationality or will power will prevent you from seeing them.

It’s a clear demonstration that at the end of the day, we’re all still fools.

Is our own self.

And right now, there are endless opportunities to ignore and escape from encountering it. Maybe that’s why we’re all so lost.

Then again, spending every waking moment with the self can also be a serious problem, as we see with solitary confinement.

Regardless of which way we tilt, the self is still the core of our problems. Heal that and we can heal the world.

Daily writing can help gather the thoughts in your head, giving clarity as needed. Daily meditation, on the other hand, will keep you in control of those thoughts. Together, they’re good habits to acquire.

However, there’s another habit that acts as a precursor to both. It’s one upon which writing depends and meditation is needed, but slowly slipping away from our constant stimulated world.

That’s the habit of just getting lost in your thoughts.

Let your mind go and allow it to wander as it will, ignoring the impulse to alleviate what you may perceive to be boredom. Your mind needs to relax and be free.

Writing will give you clarity.
Meditation will give you focus.
A wandering mind, however, will give you creativity.

Our actions are less vague than our intentions.

The integrity of our existence is not just what’s in our hearts, but what we do in our concrete, physical existence. Whatever we do in our hearts must be spelled out in our deeds.

Otherwise, there’s no point in fighting for our values because we’re not living them.

Faith is the fruit of a seed planted in the depth of a lifetime.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone

In forty years of living, I have not found a finer definition.