You don’t need to fit in. You don’t need their acceptance. If you are satisfied with your deeds and fulfilled by your goals, you are enough.

It’s not just the stuff that manipulates matter that we need to care about, but the stuff that manipulates the contents of consciousness.

If we could only stop asking: How do I make things the way I want them?

And start asking: What is the most good I can do while I’m here?

We would find the path to the fulfillment we crave.

What can one soul do to change the world? More than the world would like you to know. Light is attractive and draws us out from darkness. Let us be beacons of virtue, positivity, and love. If put out in the open, a lonely candle can light a room, and its single flame can ignite the flames of many more.

We just heard a beautiful thought experiment in gratitude. What if you died yesterday? What would you give to have this moment back? How much more would you savor it? What decisions and perspectives would you change? What concerns would you let go of? How much more would you cherish the company of your loved ones and the beauty of this colorful experience?

If you don’t want to be bothered by the judgments of others, you must first learn to let go of your own, for it is our judgments about their judgments which affect us. Theirs alone cannot touch us. Spoken insults cannot affect the deaf. Angry expressions do not bother the blind. 

Or as Marcus Aurelius might say: 

Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.

Nobody agrees with anyone on everything. 

Nobody agrees with everyone on anything. 

You can agree on nearly everything and still see someone as poorly intentioned.

You can disagree on everything and still see someone as well intentioned. 

Don’t lead with disagreement. Lead with love.

Every once in a while, it really hits us just how magnificent the people of the walk have been! I caught myself in this moment opening a ring light for a podcast we’ve been invited on, with a Pro Tech knife gifted to us by Knifeworks from Columbia, LA, while wearing a CA Vista Fire Dept shirt, in socks from one of our hosts, Taylor! They aren’t simply gifts from the “good people” out there. People within every demographic across the world have goodness in them begging to be expressed! There’s just something about this journey that lets the light shine from every corner.

Most people go deer-in-the-headlights, arguing without addressing the issues they were just presented, yet remain grossly unaware of. Don’t be that person. The people that know what they’re talking about see right through it. If you want to be a good learner, you must first learn to be acutely aware of what you don’t know, when you don’t know it. Remember Socrates. “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know.”

There’s no true fulfillment in life without love. I’ve gone through intense periods of nihilistic despair, and few things have been made more clear than this: every sacrifice we make against love in exchange for desire, judgment, or plain ol’ hate, is a step into darkness, away from the light. There is a continuum on which we all rest. But no matter how blind the darkness has made us, only light will illuminate the path. And pure light? Its vibrancy is so powerful, it will even impress itself on the most darkened views for years to come.

Nothing lasts. NOTHING. Not this flag which would flap until the very air eroded it. Not the concrete beneath it, nor any of the lives contained therein. Not the society that constructed these buildings, symbols, and ideas. Not even the stars which sit behind the spectacle. Everything is in a state of constant change. Everything dissolves and is reconstituted anew. You, your concepts, your desires, your relationships, your world, your universe, your hate, and your love. Stop clinging.

If you wish to appreciate your left hand, go without using it. If you wish to appreciate the world, try finding the self in its absence. When the entire world is taken from you, what are you? Everything and nothing.

There is joy to be found in every moment. Against all probability, you are here, now, existing. Maybe everything is going wrong right now, but what if you were only alive for this moment? What would you give just to experience this moment of existence? What would any moment of experience be worth to you if it’s all you got? We fuss and worry over the things happening within our experience as if it would be better to die, when we all would give anything to exist for but a moment in this colorful consciousness, even as a fly on the wall to the woes of the world.

Every other moment of the walk is a reminder of the vast experiences waiting to be had. Every person, a window into the many hats we might don. But experience has to be pursued. We have to be thirsty for it. The world moves on and time with it. We can watch it go by, bemoaning our position in the spectacle, but if we want to play alongside its many inhabitants, we have to be fun to play with, we have to love our play mates, and we have to understand the game their playing.

If you are going to do what you believe in, you will face obstacles, you will face danger, you will be ridiculed and opposed, you will undergo pain, you will work twice as hard for inadequate compensation, but more than anything you will face yourself and your insufferable narrator.

   Don’t do what you believe in, however, and your heart will darken as your spirit dies; you are as good as dead.

I see no enemies,

No horns in flame,

Just experiencing beings,

Too wrapped up in names.

None are unchained,

None are alone,

Each tethered to light,

To marrow and bone.

We all stumble backward,

Imperfect and worn,

Accepted in empathy,

It’s love or it’s war.

Call it good hearts and kindness,

Or some sacred thread,

There's a bounty before us,

Where all hearts can be fed.