Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Listen to some good poetry. You see? It keeps us from thinking we are only what our blatant appetites describe us as.

The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate - thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising.

What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.

Being free is being able to accept people for what they are, and not try to understand all they are or be what they are.