I stumbled across his book after a friend posted a link to the author’s speech. You should watch it first. It will give you a really good idea what his book is about. Plus he’s a really entertaining speaker.

His book is called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, and oh my is it ever true. He makes a lot of beautiful points about what it takes to find what he calls “the element”: that nexus between aptitude and passion, where what you’re good at meets what you love doing. Through countless examples of really successful people who found success through extraordinary means, Robinson shows how so many people go through life thinking they are not creative, or they’re not particularly good at anything, when nothing could be further from the truth. But true creativity, authenticity, and talent gets crushed by our educational system because it promotes one kind of success, one way of thinking, one route to fulfillment, and it’s becoming ever more standardized and forces children ever more towards conformity.

But when it comes to learning and growing and performing, there is not just one style. He says, “Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play. This turns possible underachievers into happy warriors.” Never underestimate the importance of work that for you is play. We have such a social stigma, don’t we, against actually enjoying our work? People who love their jobs are said to be the lucky ones. Imagine what life would be like if we all allowed ourselves to pursue work that was our passion. Work we hate takes too much energy. It saps the life out of us. Work we love? It gives us energy. It gives us life. And yet, we put ourselves in “sensible jobs” to pay the bills, have stability, etc. because we’ve been told what we really love isn’t a viable option. But as Robinson says, “doing something ‘for your own good’ is rarely for your own good if it causes you to be less than who you really are.”

This isn’t just about personal fulfillment either. If people are pursuing their passions, they work to the fullest of their capacity. Therein lies the magic to maximizing human potential. We don’t just need this as individuals. We need this as a society to grow.

This message isn’t just for the young trying to find their way. It’s for anyone still looking. It’s for mothers with children for whom school doesn’t have a spark, or doesn’t tap into and allow enough space for learning in the area where the child’s heart is. It’s for people looking for a second or even third career. It encourages you to think about how it is you think and learn, in what ways you are intelligent and passionate. And it re-envisages the boundless ways you can use your particular strengths. Maybe you’re really good at memorizing baseball stats. Useless as that may seem to others, who knows…you could just be a really fantastic sports team manager. Maybe you love gardening…who knows, maybe there’s a life for you in landscape design. The point is, it is never too late to try to find it.

He makes a fabulous point about how the education system only prepares for the world as it is now and leaves us hopelessly unprepared for a changing and dynamic future. But the future is incredibly dynamic. Think how much change has occurred just over the past 2 decades. Can any of us say with any certainty what 2030 will look like?

I’m increasingly convinced too that the one career or one job for your entire working lifetime model of our parents’ generation is becoming obsolete. I think that for many industries and avenues for work, many of my generation will have multiple jobs and multiple careers over the span of their lifetime. Being able to adjust and roll with this requires a great deal of versatility and flexibility. It requires thinking about your skill set in broad, open-minded ways. For many of us, I think even the idea of working for large corporations is anathema to our deepest desires and happiness. Many will venture out on their own, as small business owners, freelancers, or otherwise self-made men and women. And for many of these paths, a college degree is not exactly what it takes to succeed.

Did I just really say that? *gasp* Yes I did. After teaching undergrads at the university level for the past 5 or so years, I’ve really begun to feel that pushing kids into college for that “all-mighty degree” is a mistake (perhaps one of even colossal proportions). We are told that you can’t get anywhere anymore without a college degree. Yet, once you get past the interview stage for most jobs…for how many of us has that degree actually mattered? It’s all about what you can do and what you have done. Meanwhile, kids plunk tens of thousands of dollars into a college education and at least 4 years (now going on 5 or more with budget cutbacks), and most students are just not plugged in. They’re not particularly interested in the subjects, certainly not as interested as they are in what grade they’ll get at the end and so they end up just floating through the whole experience. What an enormous waste of time and money for the students, and of expertise and know-how on the part of professors.

Of course I think education is important. But I don’t like this boilerplate model we’re adopting. I think many students would be far better served taking some time off after high school to work or travel to find out what it is that really motivates them. When they find their passion, then they should go to school for it. They’d get far more out of the experience. And it may be that a university is not the best place for them to learn. For a lot of careers, what employers are looking for is talent, not a GPA and magna cum laude. So it may be that looking into a trade school or a series of workshops and working internships is the way to go. Some guidance and feedback is always helpful. But sometimes people really do just learn best and discover their own unique contributions most efficiently simply by doing.

Anyway, take a look at the speech. If it speaks to you, I urge you to try the book.

I personally don’t find this lack problematic at all. I think it’s good for people to have role models. But it doesn’t follow that those role models must be all-in-one: my same demographic, same values, and same generation. That would leave little to aspire to, in my opinion. I looked to different people for different things. Some were women; some were men. Most were older – for how many 13-year-olds are truly accomplished? And they came from a myriad of backgrounds. What they had were various things I admired: Jackie O. for her grace and femininity, the Dalai Lama and Rev. Desmond Tutu for their compassion and humility, my mother and father for their strength…there’s no shortage of capable and amazing people in this world. These people did not even need to be indisputable paragons of virtue either. It was my vision of who they were and what they stood for that was important.

As for the lack of consensus on values, I again don’t find this problematic. Diversity is a good thing: it keeps us aware of our limitations and provides balance. When it comes to the difficulty of finding a handful of people to inspire a generation en masse, I think it is the result of a more rich and diverse society and a larger, more diverse media. Generations past, people had the choice of maybe 3 TV stations. Now they have hundreds. Back then it was probably easier to have a small handful of voices captivate the nation. But with so much competition nowadays, it’s more difficult for one person to reach the whole nation. The options now are so diverse you can easily individualize what you are exposed to and almost literally create your own experience. It’s more likely that you’ll get what you want and minimize exposure to what you don’t want, but it does lead to fragmentation, polarization, and disassociation. Add to that an increasingly diverse society, people just aren’t going to be moved en masse by the same ideals anymore. Instead, they find their niches.

However, having such fragmentation does raise a question that the article did touch upon, and that is: what does this mean for the collective? What are the consequences for collective goals and unity? I’m not sure anyone really knows the answer to that at this point. I do think there are signs, though, that our society is going through a massive and fundamental change. Post-financial crisis, people are taking a step back and rethinking their goals, and what they want their legacy to be. And I think there’s a lot going on where people are eschewing old boundaries and “ways things have to be done” and trying more innovative strategies (for example, finding ways to have the flexibility to work from home instead of at the office). With the help of the internet, I think communal ties are being redrawn: shaped less by locale and more by interest. In a way, things are becoming a little more small-d democratic. I personally find it inspiring to watch and I think the end result could be really empowering for a lot of people.

But when I posted that opinion elsewhere, the response was that defining community by superficial and transitory interests cheapens community, that we risk losing our depth as a community if we relegate it all to electronic media instead of spending time just being human, and that rather than people becoming more authentic, there is more of a herd mentality going on.

I don’t take such a bleak view. I think finding others who are also motivated by social justice, or organic gardening, or photography, or whatever can be profoundly inspiring – even if they’re thousands of miles away from you. I think it deepens our ability to connect with and empathize with people who are far away from us. I think the disaster in Haiti and the millions of dollars raised showed just how powerfully people can empathize with one another and how that empathy can be facilitated through electronic media. Sure we weren’t all on the ground there, helping people out of the rubble. But does that make the empathy – and dollars raised – any less meaningful? And just because we make ties through electronic media, that doesn’t mean our ties to family must be any less important. Connecting with people all across the globe does not diminish the quality of time I spend with my family and friends here at home.

Being social animals, I think there are a lot of impulses in human nature that produce conformity or cause people to follow others. I don’t think there’s any more evidence of a herd mentality than there ever was in history. To think so, I think is to forget a lot of human history. But when I look around me, I do see a lot of innovative thinking and a lot of people finding new ways to approach problems and finding different ways to live their lives. Probably, through social media, I see more of it because it’s easier to see what common individuals are doing that maybe isn’t so common.

Sure there’s a lot going on that’s frustrating as all hell. Sure there are many things I wish could be better. But when I look around me, I can see a lot of reason to be hopeful for the future. I think society is going through a very profound change. Not all of it will be good. But I find some of it, at least, very inspiring and empowering.

But, for a short period, it would also be refreshing to go somewhere where we’re not surrounded by things. We live surrounded by so much abundance, but we (or I, at least) almost never see it. If I were to sit down and try to count every little item that I own personally, it would probably take days. Yet, I don’t feel I have that much – certainly less than others. And when I go shopping, there are always things I can find to desire.

It just makes me wonder: what would it be like to look around me and see that all the items I own were ones I made with my own hands? What would it be like if I had only one, or at most, two outfits to wear, instead of changing clothes every day? (I’d certainly spend less time in front of the mirror trying to decide what to wear.) What would it be like to grow my own food, raise my own cattle, harvest and slaughter and cook, with my own two hands? (True, I don’t necessarily need to go back in time to do that…but I would, to enter a state where there were no other options.)

And I think, what would it be like to have family not only be the center but also be your entire universe? To have your days filled with common chores. To have all your aunts and sisters and cousins around you working together to make things. What would it be like to create everything we consume?

In part, I think it would be powerful, empowering, humbling, and lovely. But I also think it would really make me appreciate what I do have when I came back to this time and this place. I do appreciate what I have on some levels, but this would add a whole new dimension.

Maybe we can no longer really live in a place where we create everything we consume. But it might be worthwhile to try to create more than we consume. Or, at the very least, be more mindful of how much we consume versus how much we create. I hope when I do leave this earth, I’ll not have just used, but I’ll also have given. I hope, when I leave, I leave behind something worth the space I have taken.

What would you do, if you could travel in time?

The Rules
You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the post, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

Next week’s challenge: My worst fear and its consequences
FOR A MILLION EXTRA BONUS POINTS: If you want to take on an extra challenge, try to write a story in which you don’t tell us explicitly what your worst fear is, but you play out in your head and through words what would happen if your worst fear was realized. We just might surprise ourselves with what we find here.

Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok

The biological clock is ticking and my hubby and I are thinking we’re getting close to being ready to try for kids soon (by soon, I mean probably sometime next year – after we get settled, organized, gather our wits about us, etc.). However, given our plans to move and everything, there is a very distinct possibility that our first child will be born in Thailand (but, through us, can still have US citizenship). Since I have an anal tendency to obsessively research everything, naturally I’ve already looked into this.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time already looking into childbirth and care in the U.S., reading up on how there are some very important hormonal and developmental things that happen between mother and child during the birthing process and cesareans hijack and prohibit them from occurring. Of course cesareans are a godsend in times of need, but there’s growing evidence that a whole slew of unnecessary interventions occur because the mother isn’t going through labor “fast enough” for hospital desires and wishes. There are a lot of decisions to make and options to learn about, but I think one thing is clear for me and that is I want to avoid a cesarean as much as possible (you know, assuming everything goes along as it should).

Thailand is known for having top-quality care available, at rates much more affordable than the U.S. Many of the top doctors in Thailand trained at top medical universities like Johns Hopkins in the U.S., and then go back to Thailand and work there. (Even the King of Thailand was actually born in Cambridge because his father, Prince Mahidol, studied medicine at Harvard – and later became a figure revolutionizing health practices in Thailand.) We hear a lot of stories about people from western countries flying to Thailand for surgeries, with great success, and – flight included – still end up paying less than they would here. My hubby’s even planning to have lasik surgery done while we’re there. So my initial reaction was not to worry about my ability to find good care in Thailand – especially since, in Thailand, for the right price you can basically get whatever you want.

But then I found out something that freaked me the eff out. So, as a reference, the WHO puts a healthy national cesarean rate around 5-10%. There has been a movement to raise awareness and concern about the U.S.’s cesarean rates that are skyrocketing upward from about 4.5% in the mid-1960′s when it was first measured to a high of about 32% in 2007. In Thailand, that rate is around 34% nationwide, and as high as 51% in private hospitals.

I started to worry that it would be difficult to find a doctor who would present me with clear information about my options. I started to fear that I would get pressured into something because it was better for the hospital, but that I’d be too far in pain to think clearly about it. I started to worry about all the precautions and extra arrangements I’d have to make to come back to the U.S….flying while pregnant, staying with parents, possibly being separated from my husband, the extra costs…let the panic attacks commence.

But then I talked to my mom (who was born, raised, and well-educated in Thailand) about my concerns. And she laughed. She said the reason cesareans are so high in Thailand is because women ask for them. They want cesareans so they can plan their child’s birth to fall on a “lucky” day, astrologically. Or, like even some members of my own dear family, they opt for them to keep their special woman parts looking pretty(!).

Oh, said I.

Well, in that case, I think I can stop panicking. I’m pretty sure a “honeymoon” va-jay-jay is not at the top of the list of my concerns.

And if I had a chance to tell him something (other than that I love him), I would probably tell him something very similar to what my father used to tell me. My father always used to tell me to be a lady. What would a lady do or say? That is how I should behave.

So, I would tell my son: Be a gentleman.

It is not old-fashioned to be a gentleman; gentlemen are timeless. Gentlemanly behavior is not weak, nor does it seek to put others down. Gentlemen act with respect towards others as well as themselves.

Gentlemen take ownership. Of themselves, of responsibility, and of their lives.

They live not just for pleasure, but for a higher purpose.

Gentlemen give of themselves to their nation and their community. Whether it be through military service, civic duty, or mentorship, gentlemen do not subscribe to the notion that they are an island.

Gentlemen act not with narcissism, but with pride.

Think of your legacy, not just when you reach the tail end of your days, but also as you move through this beautiful thing called life. What legacy will you leave behind?

Have a dream of who you wish to be and what you wish for your life. Then go out and chase it with everything you’ve got. You can be anything you want, but you do have to work for it. Sometimes we succeed; sometimes we fail. But the most important thing is to put in the very best effort you can. And only you can know whether you’ve given it your very best. Be not afraid of failure, for failure happens to everyone. It is nothing more than the opportunity to learn and try again. The only thing to fear is not being true to yourself.

As your grandfather would say: Be true to who you are, and for that, you must know what your values are. Stay true to your values and you’ll never go wrong.

The Rules
You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the post, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

Next week’s challenge: Complete the phrase “It all started…”

But the truth is…my life is changing. I’m excited, and maybe a little bit anxious, and definitely impatient…but surprisingly not nearly as stressed as I probably should be. Mostly I’m just totally at peace with our decisions and our path. I was definitely ten times more stressed planning our wedding than I was about these changes.

So I’ve decided it is time. Funnily enough, my decision came this morning, this day: the eve of the one year anniversary of my blog. I had planned to repost an older post to celebrate the one year anniversary tomorrow, but instead of looking back, I’ll be telling you about the path ahead. Apropos, no?

So the next little series of posts (aside from tomorrow’s Tell It To Me Tuesday challenge, of course) will be about the different changes my life is about to go through. The wheels of change are in motion, and I can’t wait to spill the beans. (How’s that for cliche and mixed metaphors?)

But for today, I will start small and tell you where I’ve been for the past week.

Saturday was my dad’s 73rd birthday. My husband couldn’t be there because his company has a yearly retreat in Portland where the company gets together to work to play, so we decided to go the weekend prior so my husband could have a little time visiting my parents. But then, I had a meeting scheduled down in my parents’ neighborhood on Thursday, so I decided to stay for the week, and brought my husband’s sister along too.

Actually, the meeting was at my parent’s restaurant. Did I tell you they own a Thai restaurant? My mom is a chef trained by the chef who trains the chefs for the king of Thailand. Their restaurant, Spice Thai, is in Lake Forest, CA…near Irvine. If you’re ever within a 100-mile radius, you really should check it out. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Anyway, so last Sunday, my hubby, SIL, and I took my niece to Knott’s Berry Farm for the afternoon. The siblings got some time to ride the big, scary roller coasters, while I got to show my 5-year old niece the fun of Camp Snoopy. She really loved the Gr8 Sk8 ride, but was totally captivated by the beautiful horses pulling the stagecoach so she couldn’t wait for a chance to ride with the horses. We waited in a really long line, and got right up to the front when the earthquake hit. At first, I wasn’t sure it was an earthquake. We had just walked onto a wooden platform and so at first I thought it was just the platform swaying. But then, it kept on going. It lasted for such a long time, but it wasn’t the jolting kind of earthquake – it was more like large, rolling waves. As if I were just woozy. It was only after it finally stopped that I reacted. But Californians, bless their hearts, are so unfazed. I asked the people around me if they felt it and they nodded…then after about 5 minutes they all began to ask when the rides would be up and running again. The staff at Knott’s shut down all the rides for inspection – and stuck between a promise to a quiet, shy, but oh-so-sweet 5-year-old niece that we’d get to ride the horses and being next in line, we ended up waiting nearly an hour before the all-clear to get on the stagecoach. Had it been a mechanical roller-coaster type of ride, I wouldn’t have waited. But the wistful eyes of a child tempted by “all the pretty horsies” – who were likewise unfazed by the earthquake – were irresistible. After the safety inspections cleared, we had our ride. And I urged my parents and sister to get her horseback riding lessons one day. (I wish I could show you pictures, but my hubby has the camera with the pictures on it.)

The next night, my hubby left so he could work, and thus began our week apart.

Thursday, I had my meeting, which went really well – more on that tomorrow!

Then Saturday was my dad’s birthday. We made beef stew, roast chicken, chutney, green bean and walnut salad, mango salsa and guacamole and had a bunch of friends and family over to celebrate. I wish I had pictures, but somehow, even though I brought my camera, I disconnected from it for most of the week. (I didn’t even participate in You Capture!) I think I was so enveloped in bonding and just being with family I don’t see nearly enough of, that I couldn’t pull myself out of it enough to be the observer one has to be in order to take photographs.

Finally, yesterday we celebrated the Thai New Year. We went to the Thai Buddhist temple in Ontario and my family prepared enormous pots of food to serve at the temple. Thai restaurants had stalls set up on the temple grounds, giving food as a donation to the temple so people could eat all the Thai food they could fit and not pay a single cent. Once our stall was set up, my mother, SIL and I went into the temple. We gave our family’s contribution to the monks, paid our respects, then sat for the ceremony. I always love the part where the monks chant the Commandments and the people recite them back in unison. It is done in Sanskrit, and the old language spoken with the multitude of voices is always very moving for me.

I don’t have pictures of that either, but I do have some from the Buddhist part of our wedding ceremony nearly two years ago. I thought I would share those, so you could have an idea. (Photos courtesy of Kelly Segre Photography.)

The ceremony at my parents' house. Hubby and I are in the middle.

Offerings to the Buddha

Paying respects to the Buddha

I love the happy smile on his face.

My beautiful mother.

The niece I mentioned. Daughter of my sister.

I couldn't resist reminiscing in going back over the photos!

Then we ate. Some good friends joined us, eyes wide with all the free food and new year’s celebrations, and within the hour, our bellies were wide and full too!

And after all the celebrations were over, I came back home last night. I walked in the door to an empty apartment and after a week filled with family, you’d think I’d relish the peace and quiet. Instead, I felt the full brunt of loneliness. One more day and my husband will be home again. I can’t wait to see him.

However, there is one point Friedan touched on and I wish she had developed it more: and that is the role of the men. The edition I have is an updated one with a couple of added introductions. The chapter I found most intriguing was one of these introductions, where she reflects back, two generations later and assesses the change. What I love about this chapter is that she doesn’t just focus on what changes have occurred for women, but also the impact on society as a whole. And as Friedan observes, the truth is, changing a woman’s world means changing the world of men too and a lot of the feminist movement does not really address that. Meanwhile, books that take on the masculine mystique and focus on the “men’s movement” have largely been copies in reverse of women’s lib and are thus inauthentic. Or they are an outmoded brand of machismo that reflects only an obsolete form of masculinity.

I believe the problem is that such a paradigm shift does alter the identity of men, but somehow they’ve never really had a larger cultural conversation about where to go and how to change in positive ways along with women. What the women’s movement has focused on is the reactionary man who bemoans the loss of job and income and retaliates through sexual harassment and violence. What it neglects to consider is the larger proportion of men who do have a desire to be positive contributors to society, but who have along the way lost a clear role model and are left to fend for themselves in navigating personal ethics.

My husband and I have been watching a lot of Mad Men lately and it occurs to me that Don Draper is a portrait of the all-American male: the man every other man wished he was. He has a lot of charm, smooth power, wealth, looks. He’s got a beautiful wife and family, home and car. When it comes to office politics, he exercises a lot of power and control, but he does it with finesse. He keeps underlings in their place, but he also does not resort to cheap jokes at the expense of others. He remains quiet – or occasionally puts others in check – when they smear another man’s honor.

But for the modern man, the old paradigm doesn’t quite work anymore for today’s society. Man’s relationship to women has to change as he shares earning power and household politics with her, as he shares more household duties and the gender lines become blurred. Blurring these lines necessarily call masculinity into question, asking society to redefine what being male truly means. Fathers have also become problematic role models because through problems caused by divorce or changing societal values in a whole slew of issues, men often face disillusionment with their fathers. Many have difficult relationships with their fathers in which they either become so disillusioned they draw away from them or they have to suffer through a period in which they try to renegotiate a new relationship with their fathers. A relationship in which they reconcile themselves to the notion that their father may not be the hero they once thought their father should be, but at least they can accept him for who he is.

Among friends, role models become even harder to find. Susan Walsh has an excellent blog on today’s hookup culture, and what I draw from it is that there is often an identity schism for male friends as well. In the past, men would have looked up to and admired the alpha males, the Don Drapers of society. But today’s alpha male often comes across as…well, kind of a dick. The beta males might wish they had some of the things alpha males have…but they don’t really want to actually be who the alpha male is. They have to compete with them, but they don’t admire them anymore. Likewise, women might fall head over heels for the Don Draper type in the past. But today many women feel they have to choose. They choose the alpha male to have sex with, but when it comes to marriage, they want the beta males – because the alphas are all just misogynist a-holes. (Actually, increasingly women seem to be more attracted to men with more feminine features!) Women sometimes do fall in love with the alpha males, but they often want to change them, redeem them, tame them – thus turning them into more of a beta male. In which case, they don’t love the alpha male at all. Rather they love just an idea of him. And the guys who are really great guys often end up feeling like they finish last.

Without clear role models, the result is many men are left suffering an identity crisis – one that seems to last longer and longer. And we have movies like Up In The Air and Greenberg about men well into their 40′s, still struggling to figure out what they want from life and who they want to be.

The thing is, many men do want to be good fathers, good husbands, and positive contributors to their work place and community. They do want wives they can talk to and respect. Ethics are important to them, but they have discovered they must figure out for themselves what those ethics are. Measures of success are personal – not compared to the Jones’s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, as long as it authentic and they can respect themselves as individuals, it is a good thing. But it is problematic when 62% of men say they miss the day when a person’s word and a handshake meant something. It is a problem when men report feeling lost, confused, left behind. It is a problem when men begin to fall behind women in school, dropping out at higher rates and performing poorly in classes.

Women’s liberation does not work if it comes at the expense of their husbands, friends, and sons. We haven’t changed societal mores if we repress or scoff at honest fears and concerns, when men feel they are muzzled by political correctness. We shouldn’t accept misogyny, but that doesn’t give us license to repress men either: that merely reverses the roles, but keeps us locked in obsolete rituals of power. What I love from Friedan’s chapter is that, even though she did not delve into the intricacies of the role of man today, she did end with a beautiful summation of what we should be trying to achieve: “Grown-up men and women….become more and more authentically themselves. And they do not pretend that men are from Mars or women are from Venus. They even share each other’s interests, talk a common shorthand of work, love, play, kids, politics. We may now begin to glimpse the new human possibilities when women and men are finally free to be themselves, know each other for who they really are, and define the terms and measures of success, failure, joy, triumph, power, and the common good, together.”

In short: equal, but in a way that simultaneously celebrates individuality, personality, and working together for the common good. What she doesn’t say, but what I think underlines her words is the necessity for mutual respect and open curiosity to engage each other.

What I’m about to say might seem counter-intuitive. And it might seem like I’m making something big out of something that should come naturally. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people.

Learning to love yourself is one of the hardest and most important things you can do in this life. Loving yourself doesn’t mean being selfish. It doesn’t mean putting your needs before someone else’s. And it doesn’t mean doing whatever you think is fun just for the sake of it.

Loving yourself means figuring out who you really are – a process that takes time, if for no other reason than the fact that you change over time. It means self-reflection. Repeatedly. Sometimes you like what you see, sometimes you don’t. And so you have to acknowledge that and figure out what parts you’re okay with and what parts you want to strive to change and make better. All of that takes time.

Loving yourself means respecting yourself. So you won’t put up with the BS of a hookup culture when what you really want is love. You won’t believe the lies of selfish men because you know what the actions of a worthwhile man look like. You’ll stand up for yourself when others put you down, but in ways that treat them with respect regardless.

Loving yourself means figuring out what would make you deep in your bones happy and reaching for it, even when others say you can’t have it. It means ignoring yourself when you say you can’t have it. Especially because you realize that happiness is not in the attainment of things or of money. It is in the stuff you cannot see.

It is a lie that you cannot love others when you don’t love yourself. You can indeed love others even without self-love. But you can love others better and more freely when you love yourself. When you don’t, there is too much need tangled up in the love and it is difficult to see which is which. There are more rules and obligations and less trust. Not so when you love yourself first.

There is more freedom in the space of love when you first love yourself.

All of this I say to you. With love,
Jade

What would you tell our nation’s daughters?

The Rules
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Next week’s challenge: Souls

But I’m so tired of all the yelling and the screaming and the fighting and the LACK OF INFORMATION. On both sides now.

I want to punch the reset button.

I used to pride myself on tolerance, but I’ve plum run out. I’ve run out of tolerance for the name-calling, hyperbole, and the media feeding on it like maggots in the muck.

I’m pretty certain both sides are operating on a totally different set of facts. But it’s nigh impossible to get to the facts through all the effing ideology-driven drivel. I’m pretty certain we DO have common goals. But it would take a miracle to find them under all the derision.

I’m pretty dang firm in my ideology.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear information that might suggest that, hey, maybe I’m wrong and that there is a whole other set of facts to consider.

If you tell me my values are wrong, I’m gonna get pissed off. Just like I’m sure everyone else would. But, dangit. Why is it so hard now to put that aside and look at facts?

I’m pretty sure other people must be frustrated when they look at the other side and think: why can’t they see they’re being lied to? If they just knew {insert favorite bit of information here}, they would totally see things differently!

Truth? There’s so much lying and covering up, misrepresenting, and misunderstanding going on these days that yeah. We’ve probably all been lied to. The question is: can we uphold ourselves to a standard that the media seem to have forgotten? Maybe we can’t be objective, but can we learn to share information without a dose of vitriol on the side?

{Irony of ironies: some of the same quotes Democrats used to scream upon the lead up to the War in Iraq are now being screamed by Republicans over health care reform. Lesson? We do have shared values – we just apply them in different contexts.}

At the end of the day, I don’t expect us all to agree. At the end of the day, I’m actually quite sure we’d still vote differently from each other.

But maybe, just maybe…we’d understand each other a little bit better.

Maybe we’d have a little more respect for each other. Love thy neighbor.
(Even when thy neighbor is of a different political party. Right?)

And maybe we would be a little less angry when we didn’t get our way. We might actually like living in a democracy and feel represented, even when we are in the minority.

Maybe we can start with this: we all are patriots. We get so angry because we all care about our country.

“Women hold up half the sky.”

If someone like Mao could figure that out, why can’t the rest of us?

If you’re wondering what I’m on about, check out my post on Half the Sky
Or read about last weekend’s Women In The World Conference.