Let Us Raise a Glass

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you from those strange borderlands that lie between happiness and discontent.

It is human and natural to yearn for an improvement in our lot -- to want more of what we have that is good, and less of what troubles us. I've experienced some exceptionally good things this week, and yet I find myself chafing at the fact that these have been irregularities and exceptions, not dependable parts of my everyday existence. I wish for a life that consists more of such high points. I wish for a way to keep them near at hand, accessible upon demand -- comfortable and familiar instead of surprising and rare.

My everyday existence is perfectly fine. It mixes a considerable amount of physical, emotional and financial comfort with only a modest dash of stress and aggravation.

Why, then, does the exceptional moment so make me pine for a more exceptional life?

In part, I suppose, it is because I desire the fulfillment of dreams. I write my novels and dream of publishing them and earning a living at it. I listen to music and watch movies and dream of existing in a constant state of aesthetic satisfaction. A great deal of my life is lived inside my head, and because there are so few limits in there, I find myself constricted whenever I return to the confines of the real world.

But in part, it is also simple greed: a failure to be satisfied with the riches within my grasp.

And what does it really take to overturn that greed? I think that it can be done with just six words, if they are taken and held to and believed.

"Look at all that I have."

It's not merely a question of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. If you think about it, all glasses are always full. It just happens that sometimes they're partly full of air. And no, you can't drink air -- but you need it to live, and it's all around us.

Do I have a full glass of sweet and blissful nectar? No. But the portion of my glass that holds no nectar is not empty. It overflows with the stuff of the world. It is filled by an atmosphere that I need to live.

Even if people occasionally pollute that air with their smoke.

"Look at all that I have."

Thank you, goddess, for a world and a life that are always full -- and for drinks that may not hold all the volume I would like, but sustain me and bless my tongue with flavor nonetheless.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Strangers in Need

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a story.

Earlier today, I passed a woman crying on a bench in the Denver airport. She had her head in her hands, and for a moment I assumed this was simply another stranded passenger among many, waiting exhaustedly for a delayed flight. Then I heard her sobbing, and I knew better.

An instinct struck me, to ask if she was all right. And then, just as quickly, that instinct capsized beneath a wave of doubt. Would she be angry at the intrusion? Embarrassed? Would I do more harm than good?

I walked on. I checked in at my gate. I pondered my noble impulse and the cowardice that had tripped it up.

I walked partway back.

She still sat there, wiping her eyes now. Had she recovered from her moment of grief? I looked out the windows at planes on the taxiway.

I looked back down the hallway again. Other passengers walked by the woman. One glanced at her with a look that suggested she must still be crying.

I made up my mind to do what I knew I ought to do. I walked over and asked if she was okay. She didn't quite hear, and asked, "What?"

I repeated myself. "Are you okay?"

She nodded and said something quickly, "Yeah" or "Uh-huh," just enough to shield herself from an admission of her pain. Her eyes met mine with an uncertain mixture of confusion and gratitude, as though she couldn't quite understand why a stranger would be expressing concern.

"Good luck, then," I said, "with whatever it is that's bothering you."

She said, "Thank you."

And she meant it -- I knew she really meant it, even though she didn't say anything else.

Sometimes you can tell these things.

I hope she's okay.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the opportunity to help -- even if only in the smallest of ways.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The World 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a quick poem.

You cannot change the world.
It is too big. Its ugliness is too ingrained.
There are over six billion people upon its ancient surface,
each of them flawed, many of them badly so,
especially some of the ones in charge.

You're too small
and too weary.

You cannot change the world ...

alone.

But we can.

55

Thank you, goddess of love, for help.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Masonry of Thought 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with 55 words that I hope may come in handy.

You can make yourself believe a great many things, simply by repeating them over and over and over again.

Good things.

Bad things.

Wonderful things.

Terrible things.

Lovely things.

Hateful things.

Keep that in mind the next time you start to tell yourself something.

Is it really the kind of thing you want to stick?

55

Thank you, goddess of love, for positive focus of mind.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Sea

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a soft whisper, like water across sand -- hushed, yet as unstoppable as the tide.

A wave, you know, is the transfer of energy. We see them breaking upon the shore, and we think that they are nothing but the ocean's indecision: forward, retreat, forward, retreat. But that is because we think of waves as moving water, when in fact water is only the medium through which the waves travel.

Each wave is its own phenomenon. It is born of wind or tide and then moves ever forward from the moment of its birth. Its swell may appear indistinguishable, to us, from the swells of its infinite brethren, but it will crest and break in its own unique way as it arrives at the shallows, and it will reach to its own unique height upon the sand as it flows and slows to its final stretch.

Our lives, too, carry energy. And move forward. And seem, at times, to be mere erratic vibrations back and forth.

But we must not fall prey to the illusion that we are mere blind repetitions of a cycle. The world is the medium through which our lives move, just as the sea is a highway to the waves.

By reaching, and reaching, and reaching -- as far and as high as we can go -- we help to give the world its beauty. To remember this is to be at peace: to know that we will end in a cool sigh upon the sand, to the sound of birds and the caress of the sea breeze, with a very blue sky high above.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the sea through which I move.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Two Choices

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with something that I am normally leery of: a dichotomy.

On my jog this evening, I was listening to “Arrows from the Sun” by Therion. I can’t tell you what the song is supposed to mean -- frankly, the lyricist for Therion is pretty whacked out. But I hear the words as an ode to the light of human creativity, so it started me thinking about the choice to create.

As I jogged, I couldn’t escape this conclusion: if we do not choose to create, then we choose destruction. There is no middle ground.

The reason for this is simple. The universe operates on a principle of increasing entropy. Things wear out. They fall apart. That which is useful turns into that which is utter flotsam, if we do not act to maintain it.

It would be nice if we could simply leave things to their own devices and expect them to keep humming along, whether those things might be automobiles, systems of government, or personal relationships. But the truth is that if we don’t expend energy on a regular basis, things collapse.

So we can either choose to create -- to invest ourselves in the world around us in order to prop it up and keep its polish shining -- or we can choose decay, degeneration, and eventual chaos.

And once you recognize this fact, it’s no good complaining about it, because complaint is a destructive force, and destroying, even in an off-handed way, will only leave you empty and likely to engage in other acts of destruction.

So I choose to create. It’s hard, and I don’t always succeed at it. I backslide. I mope. I let myself coast for days at a time. But eventually the truth becomes inescapable: I cannot be happy if I am not bringing some form of light to the world -- even if it’s only cleaning my bathroom or weeding the lawn.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the spark that lets us fight entropy.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Affection

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an armful of reassurance and a strong hand upon whatever lonely shoulder you may turn my way.

It has been my experience that people are kind of lousy at showing affection. This is not true of all people, of course. My sister and mother and brother are all pretty successfully affectionate. But I have other family members whose affections have always been conditional, and I've been involved with people at various times in my romantic life who've had difficulty showing affection.

And I myself am no wizard at warmth either. I'm bad at consoling people who've had a misfortune. I can never figure out what to write when a coworker loses a family member and the sympathy card goes around for signatures. I get very nervous when saying goodbyes to people who are on that boundary between "friend" and "just an acquaintance." Do I hug them? Do I shake hands? A friend expecting a hug might find a handshake disappointing. An acquaintance expecting a handshake (or just a "see you later") might find a hug overfamiliar. This should not really be a dilemma, and yet I find it vexing on a regular basis.

Still, it seems to me that the most important thing about affection is that we try.

There is a certain good that is done to the world when a friend receives a hug at a moment when he or she really needs it, and I think that creating such a good outweighs the occasional discomfort of an acquaintance who expected only a wave and a farewell.

Yes, affection is a signal, and people can misread it, and all sorts of confusion and disarray can sometimes result. But it makes the world a warmer place, and the world could really use that.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the bravery that it sometimes takes to be affectionate, and for the glow we feel when that bravery brings light into another person's day.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Jogging

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you a bit damp with sweat and in need of a shower.

I jogged tonight, instead of walking. That's because I got some crummy cholesterol results today -- my "good" cholesterol, the kind that's raised by exercise, was in the toilet, and my triglycerides had shot through the roof. So apparently just going out for a walk every night wasn't exercise enough.

I found it strangely harder to think while jogging than while walking. Maybe all the blood was going to my muscles and my heart instead of my brain. But that ended up being a good thing. Sometimes I think too much and it doesn't do me a lick of good, but when I back off and just zone out, things seem to settle into place.

The fact that I bothered to jog, and the jogging itself, and the zoning out while jogging, may have helped a little with my attitude, which has lately been unpleasantly fatalistic. I've been in a major "what's the point" mode for a while now, and although I've kept up with many of my activities, it's been a chore to do so and much less fulfilling that I would hope. 

But I jogged anyway. I jogged because, even if there seems to be little point at the moment, it would really suck to hit 50 or 55 and rediscover my zest for living and then keel over from a heart attack. Even worse would be having one of those heart attacks that leaves you disabled, from a blood clot or other complication. I jogged because I want the chance to enjoy life, even if there are big chunks of my life that I'm not enjoying right now.

I'd like to tell you that I came home feeling great -- riding a wave of revelation, ready to take on the world tomorrow. But I actually just came home feeling okay. And then I sat down and wrote out some notes on the next thing I need to do in my book, which had been eluding me for some time, and I felt okay about that too.

Now I've written a nice big post here for the first time in a long time, and I'm feeling okay about that as well.

And while "okay" may not be great, it does beat the heck out of "what's the point?"

Thank you, goddess of love, for a working heart and for small victories over nihilism.

Lovingly yours,

 

A devotee

Sometimes Small Things Are All You Can Do 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word, "Love." Here are 55 words I came up with tonight.

I have worked today. Devoted time to family. Written at my novel. I am hurt, in wrists and arms. In my psyche. I am tired. Yet I take pains, now, literal pains, to write this for you. You deserve to know someone cares. May I ask, please -- go and let someone else know it too?

55

Thank you, goddess, for the strength to make an effort, even if only a small one.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Goddess 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you in a spirit of observance. I wrote the following in my journal, and when I counted it out, it was exactly 55 words without even trying, so I figured I'd post it.

She lives in every moment that joy lights the eyes. She dwells in those places of laughter, those smiles of contentment. When the heart stirs, she is there, and also when the warm glow of sleep in a comfortable bed holds us half-conscious at the cusp of awakening, while pleasant dreams wind themselves to conclusion.

55

Thank you, goddess of love, for serendipity.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee.

I Am Moved

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a kinetic enthusiasm -- a vibrance that is born in momentum.

While out walking tonight, I found myself thinking how important it is to be in motion. 

(In the interest of full disclosure, I had this epiphany while listening to “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran, which may undercut both my philosophical credibility and your faith in me as an aficionado of rock and roll. But if it’s any help, my iPod followed that with “Crush ’Em” by Megadeath.)

Few things deaden the soul so thoroughly as the sense of being inert. Stable becomes static becomes stagnant, and when we feel that we are stuck, everything else begins to turn grey -- regardless of the circumstances in which we have become entrenched. Stillness closes in on us like a trap.

Yet even as we decry our immobility, the urge to move, to work our muscles and propel ourselves, somehow eludes us once we reach that state of entrenchment. We feel that we have been deserted by our winds, abandoned by the stars that might have shown us our way across the sea. The world becomes an endless, flat sargasso, dull and hopeless, where we wait and wait for a new breeze, slowly consuming our stores of water and sustenance until we risk desperation so great that we might drink of the brine and descend into madness.

We forget, somehow, that a brisk walk creates its own wind. That our thoughts can, if so directed, travel in paths that are not circles, to reach destinations that are not bleak.

Remember this: it is better to wander -- utterly lost but determined that you should find something -- than to sit and bemoan your paralysis.

Thank you, goddess of love, for a sense of progress, and for a mystery that I can progress toward.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Seize What You Believe

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a challenge that I am attempting to live up to myself.

Objects come and go. You may attain them, they may please you, and then they may break or become lost or develop a depressing malfunction.

People come and go. They may like you, they may love you, they may betray you, they may desert you.

Circumstances come and go. The job you hate may pass; the job you love may hand you a pink slip. A favorite club may close. The town you have come to know like the back of your hand may suddenly put itself in your rearview mirror.

But none of this means that life is a ceaseless parade of dangled hopes and lost possessions. The fact of transience simply is. It is not good or bad, but merely a fact.

And in one critical way, you can stand firm against transience -- against the ephemeral nature of this world.

You can believe in something, and insist upon believing in it, and hold fast to it.

And who knows? Maybe someday that adamant conviction, if properly displayed, will win you the perfect job that you can ride right through to retirement. Will carry you to a place where you can settle until the end of your days. 

Will attract someone who sticks and does not leave.

But even if it doesn't, your belief alone will get you through -- if only you grip it tightly enough and refuse to let go.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the knowledge that I can be larger than this fickle, fleeting world, as long as I simply demand that I be so.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Importance of Being Unimportant

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you from a whirl of chaos, left by the near passing of catastrophe. But I don't intend to write about that.

A very wise person recently suggested to me (not in so many words) that we serve our friends best by being ourselves.

We are important to our friends because of who we are -- not what we do or what we say. They are drawn to us because they enjoy the kinds of things that we naturally do and say when being ourselves.

They need us -- to the extent that they do need us -- because something about the kind of people we are calls out to them.

In good times, this principle requires no conscious acknowledgment or thought on our part. We do as we do, our friends do as they do, and through that wonderful synergy and coincidence, all of our bright lives are made brighter.

But there is a challenge to this simple truth that occurs when things are not so smooth. When a friend is hurting, when a friend could clearly use some comfort or aid, we begin to search for the right thing to do to help. This is not necessarily bad, especially if we are the kind of person who ordinarily spends a lot of time thinking about the right things to do.

However ... if we pressure ourselves, if we insist to ourselves that it is SO important to find the right thing that's needed to help, two insidious things can begin to occur. First, the pressure may cause us to drift from that state of simply being ourselves -- of behaving in the way that caused us to be important to our friends in the first place. Second, our brains may play a little trick on us, perform a little slip that takes us from thinking, "It is SO important to me to help my friend," into thinking, "I need to help my friend because I know how important I am to them."

In pressuring ourselves, we distort ourselves. In focusing too much on the importance of helping, we inflate our own sense of importance. Soon, despite having started from the best of intentions, we have moved into a mode of behavior unlike our ordinary one, a mode which may or may not bear any resemblance to the behavior that drew our friends to us in the first place.

The lesson is, be there for your friends -- but be there by being yourself. Remember that you can't fix your friends, just as they can't fix you. But if you brighten their world by remaining true to the person they find so entertaining or engaging, then you may help them find the support they need to fix themselves.

Don't worry about how important your help might or might not be. Just be as you are, and if you're the right kind of person to start with, your friends will find all the help they need in you, on their own, and naturally.

Thank you, goddess of love, for humbling experiences, and for friends who stick with you even if you go off the rails sometimes.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Celebrations of Life

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with wishes of joy, peace, and generosity for this holiday season.

Christmas is ambivalent for many people. The holidays bring music and decorations that are meant to lift spirits, yet it's often reported that depression spikes upward at this time of year as well. I personally like the secular Christmas carols a lot, but have a harder time listening to some of the more religious ones.

I think that we who doubt the scriptural story of Christmas are challenged by this time of year because we see others attributing joy to a source we cannot credit.

I want to believe in peace and decency and the power of a happy heart, and so it troubles me that I see people expressing these things while ascribing to them an origin I find dubious. Alienated from the cause of their joy, I ask whether my faith in joy itself is therefore in doubt.

Then, too, it is easy to tread the path of cynicism and ask, "If peace and generosity and love of one's fellow man are so important to remember, why not remember them all year long, instead of just for the space of a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day?"

Nor is the task of accepting holiday cheer made any easier by buffoons in the media who try to fire up their listeners with stories about the "War on Christmas," full of outrage that department store chains ask their greeters to say "Happy Holidays" instead of extolling the specifically Christian message that the righteous desire to hear.

But the existence of pettiness and hypocrisy should never be allowed to tarnish that which is real and beautiful. If so many people have larger hearts at this time of year, that is an undeniably good thing, which can never be lessened by the fact that a few of them also have smaller minds than we'd wish.

When large numbers of people celebrate life, sing of hope, and give sanctity to joy, then we should bow our heads with them in appreciation, even if we believe differently than they do.

People are ugly and mean and vindictive year-round. The fact that some of them can be better during the Christmas season, and the fact that most can express wishes for a better world, should give us cause for boundless gratitude.

Thank you, goddess, for all occasions which lift hearts and encourage wonder.

Merry Christmas to all.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Revenge 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a story of triumph that I hope will serve you well. 

It surprised Pamela

that she had enemies.

Bosses.

Coworkers.

Strangers

on the road.

She tried so hard to be nice,

but

SOME

people...

ugh!

At last, though,

she finally found

an

absolutely

perfect

vengeance.

Every day, 

she got up in the morning,

and she lived her life

as if none of them

mattered

at

all.

55

Thank you goddess of love, for the knowledge that enemies have no more power over us than we give them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

When Grace is the Comfortable Norm

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a recommendation, if you find motivation or purpose elusive.

In most large cities, you should be able to call the local ice-skating rink and find out when they have classes and what level of skaters they teach. (Don't worry; I'm not going to recommend skating lessons.) Consider taking a trip down to the rink the next time a high-level class is scheduled, and simply go in and have a seat in the observation area.

You might even have luck just going in during open skating and looking amongst the crowds of skaters for the small number of really proficient ones.

What I want you to look for, and pay attention to, is an excellent skater who is not actively practicing.

A true talent who is just standing around. Perhaps chatting with a friend.

The reason I want you to look for this, and watch it closely if you find it, is simple: it will show you how the pursuit of art changes you.

Whether one likes figure-skating or not, it's an impressive art form that requires extraordinary discipline as well as natural ability. These facts are obvious to us when we see the elaborate routines that good skaters develop and perform.

But what is less obvious is that even when not performing, a truly exceptional skater is something beyond ordinary. The typical person at the rink, whether in motion or still, remains not quite in his or her element. Even people who skate well have a bit of tension, a bit of caution in their posture, when not actively skating. They may be comfortable, even relaxed -- but they will not appear quite as comfortable or relaxed as they would be standing flat on solid ground.

A remarkable skater, though, is different.

A remarkable skater, one who has lived and breathed skating for years, appears just as much at ease on the ice as off -- perhaps even more so. They can be fully preoccupied with something else -- a conversation, or paying attention to a trainer or coach -- and still exhibit complete and effortless grace in their posture and movement.

They have become creatures at home in a strange realm, and this transformation has left them unable to appear clumsy or out-of-balance unless they deliberately attempt something beyond their skill.

In pursuing the ability to create beauty, they have themselves become reflexively beautiful.

And this is where effort takes us, when we aspire to make ourselves capable of beauty: to the place where grace needs no conscious thought.

Of course, if you're already a champion figure-skater and still find motivation and purpose elusive, I guess this post is pretty useless to you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for all those who have in some way made greater beings of themselves.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Wilderness of Your Soul

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a metaphor, which I hope does not come off as too painfully overconstructed.

We have within us wild places -- frontiers of our psyche that are little explored, and also woodlands and marshes we have been to time and again, yet never managed to tame. The mind is a place rampant with growth, where our conscious thoughts are the only domesticated residents.

When we focus our consciousness outward, to deal with the people and things around us, we live in a civilized realm, or at least one that puts on a mask of civilization.

But inside, we have passions and memories and reflexes that do not answer to civilized notions.

If we shun those wild places -- if we look only outward, live only for the external events and pressures and stimuli that we encounter -- then our interior frontiers can only grow more wild, more dangerous. Sooner or later, we may be forced to venture into them, and if we have never prepared ourselves to do so, they may consume us.

But whatever the perils of our untrammeled wildlands, they have richness and beauty too. And if we seek their safer quarters, if we explore and search with the right preparation, well equipped for pushing in through trackless, thorny depths, then we can learn how to be safe and even comfortable in their fabulous and natural glory.

There is wildness inside you. Put on your boots and take up your walking stick. Make sure you have matches and a pocketknife with you. 

Find the green glade splashed with sunlight where no one has ever been.

Look up at the vast blue sky.

Let yourself quiver a little at the distant growling that echoes from the shadowy undergrowth nearby.

And know that it is all you.

Do this often enough, and carefully enough, and you will eventually learn which paths through the wilderness of your soul are safest, and which fruits you can carry out of the woods to share with those beyond.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the forests of thought and instinct and, yes, metaphor within us.

Lovingly yours, 

A devotee

An Inner Knowing 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a 55 that I thought better-suited to this blog than to my "other writings" one. Here it is:

Worlds open up to the heart that asks itself, "What do you want?" and then waits patiently for an answer.

It is the readiness to know the self that primes us for understanding our place in life.

This trust of what is inside, even things hidden, surpasses any pangs that might assail us from without.

55

Thank you, goddess of love, for questions and for ears.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Be a Spirit in Search of Beauty

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word "love," and I wish upon you its sister, "beauty."

The title of this post really says all I mean to say at the moment.

Be a spirit in search of beauty.

If you seek, you shall find.

The only real clarification I need to add is, don't be a picky spirit. Don't insist on a certain kind of beauty, don't await the pinnacle of your preconceptions.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the will to look for you in all things.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Give, and Do Not Ask

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a lesson that I seem unable to retain, no matter how many times I learn it.

The old saying insists that It is better to give than to receive.

There are several ways to interpret this. One interpretation is that the act of giving is superior to the act of receiving. I'm kind of dubious of that interpretation, because in an awful lot of situations, receiving just plain rocks. Let's be honest -- if a mysterious black void appeared in the air in front of you, would you rather take a present and throw it into the void, or would you rather a puppy fell out of the void for you? (Assuming you're the kind of person who likes puppies.)

This first interpretation of the phrase suggests that generosity is superior to avarice -- which is true enough -- but if that's all there is to it, then it seems like kind of a weak way to guilt us all into being more generous. I don't like it when people (or aphorisms) try to make me feel guilty, because I've got my own guilt complex to start with and I don't need any help with it, thank you very much. So that's another reason I shy away from this reading of the saying.

A related interpretation is that we should strive to enjoy the act of giving, because if we can teach ourselves to get pleasure from giving, the world will be a better place. I'm a lot more willing to buy this interpretation. But it still carries a rather lecturesome tone. Reading between the lines, one can't help but take it to mean, "You know, you're kind of a selfish twit, and you need to fix yourself. So shape up and do some giving."

But here's the interpretation that I have learned (and keep relearning) to be true.

Giving is simply a better strategy for happiness than receiving.

When you give, you are almost guaranteed to receive some form of gratitude in return. Not in every case, but in most of them. And because the gratitude you receive is unasked-for, it's a bonus. 

In contrast, if you depend on receiving for your happiness, you live your life in a constant state of expectation, and every time that expectation goes unmet, you are disappointed.

So if you give, and give without expectation, life is full of bonus happiness for you, whereas if you hunger to receive, it is full of disappointment.

And if you adopt giving as a strategy, and make it a habit, and find your life constantly enriched by the gratitude that naturally flows your way in response, then sooner or later you find that, without even trying, you've learned to enjoy giving for its own sake.

And then you can give into the void and be delighted by it.

Of course, the giving life requires a lot of energy, and can take a lot out of you. And if you run into a string of ingrates who fail to respond well to your generosity, you can begin to doubt the strategy.

Which is why you need to remember to regularly give to yourself.

There's nothing in the saying that says the giving always has to be giving to others.

Just remember, when you give to yourself ...

Say, "Thank you."

Thank you, goddess of love, for generosity, for gratitude, for lessons learned both easily and through hard knocks.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee