You are much more than the sum of what you produce.

Studies of people who report high well-being in their fifties and sixties indicate that they have lived lives that involved personal risks. They are not people whose lives have been calm and predictable. A life under tight control sometimes produces quiet desperation. High well-being is a life that has depth and quality. Risks, losses, problems, and tragedy add pain to a life. That pain becomes a teacher. We learn; the pain gives us no choice.

The average person's short-term memory can hold only five to seven bits of data at any one moment. If you put more items in, others fall out. The older you are, the more you have crammed into those memory circuits. Twenty-five-year-olds can remember things because they still have empty space. Some of us take our children to the supermarket in the hope they will remember why we are there.

There are, of course, two kinds of suffering, that which has a reward and that which doesn't.

The impression is that love is something that happens to you like magic. That love is something others do for you, but that you cannot do for yourself. Love is not something you wait for. Love doesn't just happen. Love is something you do. When you want love, give love. Moment to moment, you make the choice whether to give love and be loved.

Success is every minute you live. It's the process of living. It's stopping for the moments of beauty, of pleasure; the moments of peace. Success is not a destination that you ever reach. Success is the quality of the journey.

We have so much, yet many Americans feel dissatisfied. Somehow the full table, symbol of abundance to the pilgrims, is not enough. We yearn for something far beyond the material satisfaction. Find your place in history this Thanksgiving by stretching beyond your table. Celebrate your survival by offering peace and sharing with your neighbors. Make the shift from in illogical feeling of lack to the recognition of abundance. Invite the Spirit to your feast, and prepare to feed the world.