One of the best things about life is friends. We all agree on that. And yet our shyness with strangers often prevents friendship from ever gaining a foothold. If only we would realize that the other person is probably just as shy as we are and is simply waiting—and hoping—for us to make the first move.

It was different with you, Leo. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same.

As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.

Do not follow me! Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tommorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!

She's in tenth grade,' he said. 'I hear she's been homeschooled till now.' Maybe that explains it,' I said.

No one's hurt is too small, no worry too removed, no blessing so elusive that it cannot be seen by the eyes in the back of the human heart.

Why do we wrap things? Usually to protect them. The more fragile they are, the more important the wrapping. Your dream is prey to many perils. It may shatter under the blows of criticism, evaporate with competition's heat, sink to the bottomless depths of others' indifference. Tend to your dream. Protect it as you would a fallen nestling. Until the day when it—and you—will fly.