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“I can’t tel you what to do, sweetheart. That’s something you’re going to have to decide for yourself,”

We will learn the truth about our illusions, about happiness and the grandness of who we really are. We will learn how we have been given everything we need to make our lives work beautifully.

love is all that matters. Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us

Life hands us lessons, universal truths teaching us the basics about love, fear, time, power, loss, happiness, relationships, and authenticity. We are not unhappy today because of the complexities of life. We are unhappy because we miss its underlying simplicities. The true challenge is to find the pure meaning in these lessons. Many of us think we were taught about love. Yet we do not find love fulfilling, because it’s not love. It is a shadow darkened by fear, insecurities, and expectations. We walk the earth together yet feel alone, helpless, and ashamed.

When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best. When we find the true meaning of these lessons, we also find happy, meaningful lives. Not perfect, but authentic. We can live life profoundly.

Perhaps this is the first and least obvious question: Who is it that is learning these lessons? Who am I

So is the great person already inside of you ready to be revealed. Everyone carries the seeds of greatness. “Great” people don’t have something that everyone else doesn’t; they’ve simply removed a lot of the things that stand in the way of their best selves.

Sometimes we consciously or unwittingly adopt new roles as circumstances change and are hurt by the result. For instance, a couple may say, “It was so wonderful before we got married. Once we were married, something went wrong.” When the couple was together before, they were just being. The moment they got married they took on the roles that had been taught to them, trying to “be a husband” and “be a wife.” On some subconscious level they “knew” what a husband or wife should be like and tried to act accordingly instead of being themselves and discovering what kind of spouses they wanted to be.

Or, as one man explained, “I was such a great uncle, now I feel so disappointed in the father I’ve become.” As an uncle, he interacted with children from his heart. When he became a father, he felt he had a specific role to assume, but that role got in the way of his being who he is, authentically himself.

Sometimes when I would sit in my father’s lap, I knew he did not know which one I was. Can you imagine what this does to your identity? Now we know how important it is to recognize the individual, to recognize how different each of us is. These days, when multiple births have become routine, parents have learned not to dress and treat their kids alike.

I have always tried to be myself, even when being myself may have not been the most popular choice. I don’t believe in being a phony-baloney for any reason