Life is a voyage

I feel compelled to write this because you, my darling son and daughter, feel the intensity of your lives and are wondering about having and creating "the right life."

You don't have one life. You have many lives.

You will be a hippie, a conservative, a single person, part of a couple. You will be a student, a worker, a volunteer. You will have a job, be unemployed, start your own business. There will be times when you drink a lot, perhaps, and times when you are against alcohol totally. You will have years when you meditate, eat vegetables and do yoga. Then you will find yourself a rip-roaring steak eater, the more rare the better. You will be a baker, baking your family's daily bread, and then go for years buying your cookies and pies. You will identify yourself as a painter, then stop painting and become a business person or vice versa. You will go through many different styles of life and of clothes. You will be skinny, you will be chubby. You will be happy, you will be depressed. You will have long hair, short, spiky, coloured, permed, curly, straight hair. You will be single, married, divorced, a widower. You might be a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a niece, a nephew, a cousin, a sister, a brother, an in-law, a friend, an enemy, a client, a boss, an employee.

No matter who you are or who you are with, you are always yourself, alone.

Life is an evolution of who you are, of who you become. You are never one thing. Life is a voyage. Flow in each moment, loving each version of yourself, each burning interest of the day. Life is always a quest. Embrace the journey; there is no "arriving." That's what makes life so wonderful. Always something around the bend. Always something to learn, something to strive for.

And if you understand now, that there is always one more person who needs your love and understanding, you will never be lost.