There's an African proverb: 'When death finds you, may it find you alive.' Alive means living your own damned life, not the life that your parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live.

While you had the chance to live, did you become your true self?

Until, modern times when it became mostly a civic task, education was considered a sacred work. It was sacred because it involved the indwelling spirit in the student and because it required an awakened spirit in the teachers. Spirit to spirit, genius to genius, soul to soul go the true lessons that help young people become themselves. Ultimately, each person holds the key to the story trying to be lived from within, but first someone else must help unlock the mystery of one’s life.

In many tribal cultures, it was said that if the boys were not initiated into manhood, if they were not shaped by the skills and love of elders, then they would destroy the culture. If the fires that innately burn inside youths are not intentionally and lovingly added to the hearth of community, they will burn down the structures of culture, just to feel the warmth.

Emotions are the natural substances of the soul ... and when we think we can't handle the emotions, we lose the natural substances of the soul and begin looking for substances to replace the flow.

The desire to be part of something greater and to occupy life more fully, is also a desire to touch and be touched by the living imagination that sustains each soul and all of life.

When a culture simply shrugs about what happens to people in war, it breaks the fragile sequence, the bond between all people.