More Serious Matters

My blog posts thus far have had a pretty light tone. This one will not.
What follows is an email I sent out a couple weeks ago...

Hello freinds,
I originally wrote this for one person (you know who you are). In the course of typing this up I thought maybe others could benefit from some of these ideas. These are things I've learned mostly the hard way over the course of the past year or so. I hope I don't come across as pompus or anything in sending this out. Just trying to help.

-Don't be afraid of your emotions. Our feelings are what make us human and fully alive, even if they hurt (in fact, some would say especially if they hurt).

-Believe in something, especially yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, there's almost always someone who does, and sometimes that's all you need. It's the people who don't believe in anything, who don't have faith, who require empirical evidence for everything that can be the most dangerous.

-Change can be scary, but more often than not it's for the best.

-Being nervous or scared is okay...it means you have some "skin in the game". It means that you care.

-The saying "that which does not kill me makes stronger" is only true if you actually choose to become stronger in the face of adversity. Some don't (actually, most don't).

-Try to laugh your ass off at least once a day. Cultivate relationships with amusing people, read funny blogs (http://www.dooce.com/2008/01/17/no-matter-how-they-toss-dice-it-had-be), watch comedy movies, whatever.

-It's not fair to say that "people suck". People are sometimes good and sometimes bad, just not always in equal measure. I suppose much of the same thing could be said about life in general.

-Take any opportunity you can find to do something good for someone. It really doesn't matter what. There's probably nothing better you can do for your world and for your own self-esteem.
Thanks for reading,
Jim

The following points are from a subsequent email that I sent out to just a few people...
-Hope. Hope is paramount. Even when you can't see it, it's always there. Just because you can't see or feel the sun behind those gray clouds, that doesn't mean it's extinguished. It's always there.
-The future. The future is yours to conquer and you are not your past.
-Your life. It's your life to control and make the best of. Your life does not belong to your parents or your ex-husband or your mindless friends. It's yours. Take responsibility for it. Run with it until you're out of breath and can't run anymore.