It has been a lovely quiet Sunday. I’m enjoying it without reservations and finding it satisfying and tranquil. There have been opportunities to make choices that could take me in a very different direction. Choices and verbs. We have will, we have intentions, we make choices, we act… Or we don’t actually act, then wonder why our will is ineffective, our intentions lack value, and our choices don’t take us where we expected or hoped they would. There is no arguing with a verb.

The air plant on my desk at work, a metaphor for thriving under difficult circumstances. 

Thinking about that, this morning, I wondered what I would say to myself, if I’d asked me ever so long ago, what I could be doing differently…to be ‘happy’? If I could have written myself a note, sent it back a couple of years, a few, or even decades, what would I have suggested I do, or change, to get here sooner? Something like this, maybe?

• Please take care of you. I’d say more, but in the end the choices and will are yours.
• Please also consider others, not because they do or don’t deserve that from you, and not out of obligation. Please consider others as a mark of your own good character, and because it has every day value in your experience.
• Please be kind. Kindness isn’t weak, kindness isn’t costly, and however cynical you’ve grown over the years, you’re likely able to see that ‘kind’ feels better than ‘callous’ or ‘cruel’, so what harm is there in being kind? The harm in callousness and cruelty is easy to spot.
• Please take a moment to pause in stillness and consider how unlikely it is just to have this one precious moment…
• Please do your best. It’s not about competition, there’s no winner’s circle at the end of life, and the person most damaged by a half-assed effort on your part will generally be you. Your best may not be ‘good enough’ by someone else’s standard. It may not set records, or net huge bonuses or cash windfalls. Your best may not achieve all you hoped to achieve. Your best may not be what you expected it to be. Your best, though, is every bit of all that you can do…and that is enough. Always enough. There’s still a verb implied there… and… the bad news is that you don’t fool yourself if you do less than  your best, while insisting to someone else that you did do your best. Maybe there will be times when your very best effort turns out to be the humble admission that you didn’t do your best, when you could have, when it mattered, when someone is counting on you? Are you that strong? (Please, do your best.)
• I’m not ‘telling you what to do’. It’s not about that. I’m learning some wonderful things about living a rich and pleasant experience, and it feels good – and I really want to share that.  It has taken so long to get this far. It’s been hard, more than ‘sometimes’. I’ve failed a lot. I expect to fail plenty more – I learn pretty fast that way, myself.  I’m pretty sure that more than one friend made some of these suggestions to me, along the way, and I wasn’t ready to hear them.  I am grateful that when I found myself ready, the words and ideas and experiences that have helped me find my way in the darkness were still there. So. I’m passing them along. In case you are ready. 
• Good luck with your journey; there is no map, drink plenty of water.

So hey… Thank you for reading. Thank you for writing.  Thank you for being. Good luck with your journey.