Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.
I urge you to pursue preserving your personal history to allow your children and grandchildren to know who you were as a child and what your hopes and dreams were.
What I know for sure is that if you can survive 11 days in cramped quarters with a friend and come out laughing, your friendship is the real deal. I know ours is.
With every failure, every crisis, every difficult time, I say - What is this here to teach me? And as soon as you get the lesson, you get to move on. If you really get the lesson, you pass and you don't have to repeat the class.
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
The nature of Buddhism, as I understand it, is to believe that we are all pure and radiant at our core. And yet we see around us so much evidence that people are not acting from a place of purity and radiance.
I was probably toward 8 1/2 when I actually joined the church and was baptized - and, my God, did I take it seriously! I was a zealot who irritated every one of my third-grade friends. They didn't beat me up, but I got labeled "the preacher girl."