As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves. What can we do to foster their open-hearted hopefulness, engage their need to collaborate, be an incentive to utilize their natural competency and compassion...show them ways they can connect, reach out, weave themselves into the web of relationships that is called community.

The moments you are given are your true wealth. You don't need power, influence, or fame. The sunlight brings the power; the wind carries the influence. And as for fame, well, when you allow yourself to notice all those hands that have made your growth possible, you will also recognize what you have made possible for countless others — and how famous you already are. In this very moment, one of those others may be telling a story about how you helped them grow forward.

From the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits. We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right. By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence. If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning ever so slightly and swimming gracefully in the water all around us.

I don't think anyone 'finds' joy. Rather, we cultivate it by searching for the preciousness of small things, the ordinary miracles, that strengthen our hearts so we can keep them open to what is difficult: delight in taking a shower or a slow walk that has no destination, in touching something soft, in noticing the one small, black bird who sings every morning from the top of the big old pine tree ... I need to give my attention to the simple things that give me pleasure with the same fervor I have been giving it to the complex things with which I drive myself crazy.

Reignite the fire in your heart. Live on purpose.

I will not die an unlived life...I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me...I choose to risk my significance.

When we find ourselves devoid of passion and purpose, the first thing we need to do is stop. But that's not easy. The rest of the world is zooming by at full speed. Left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we can become nervous and self-critical about what we should be doing and feeling. This can be so uncomfortable that we look for any distraction rather than allowing ourselves the space to be as we are.