My first exposure to the vocabulary of inter-beingness was through the writings of Thich Nhat Hahn, to whom I remain enormously grateful.

The fifty trillion cells in your body are constantly talking to each other as they keep your heart beating, digest your food, eliminate toxins, protect you from infection and disease, and carry out the countless other functions that keep you alive. While these processes may seem out of your conscious control, hundreds of studies have shown that nothing holds more power over the body than the mind.

I use memories but I will not allow memories to use me.

The cosmos is structured to bring about growth, and growth is always in the direction of greater love and happiness.

Stop attaching so much weight to being right. In the grand scheme of things, being right is insignificant compared with being happy.

In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty...in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.

Try not to worry what your parents think - try to help them see that you do live by the values that they taught you.