Acceptance is the end of our argument with reality. Once we face the facts, no matter how disturbing they are, we feel calmer and less crazy. Erik Erikson defined clarity as “the capacity to fear accurately.

As I grow older, I try not to focus on my regrets and failures, but rather to focus on what I’ve accomplished.

We can deal with our cultural and environmental crises only after we deal with our human crises of trauma, denial, and emotional paralysis. This will require that most difficult of all human endeavors, facing our own despair. This involves waking from our trance of denial, facing our own pain and sorrow, accepting the world as it is, adapting, and living more intentionally.

I do believe our culture is doing a bad job raising boys. The evidence is in the shocking violence of Paducah, Jonesboro, Cheyenne, and Edinboro. It’s in our overcrowded prisons and domestic violence shelters. It’s in our Ritalin-controlled elementary schools and alcohol-soaked college campuses.

Finally I teach the joys of altruism. Many adolescent girls are self-absorbed. It’s not a character flaw, it’s a developmental stage. Nonetheless, in makes them unhappy and limits their understanding of the world. I encourage girls to find some ways to help people on a regular basis.

Education is teaching children to find pleasure in the right things.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.

I teach girls certain skills. The first and most basic is centering. I recommend that they find a quiet place where they can sit alone daily for 10 to 15 minutes. I encourage them to sit in this place, relax their muscles and breathe deeply. Then they are to focus on their own thoughts and feelings about the day. They are not to judge these thoughts or feelings or even direct them, only to observe them and respect them. They have much to learn from their own internal reactions to their lives.

Our media outlets pay attention to the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but not to species extinction rates. In this country money is well organized, but survival is not.

Being fat means being left out, scorned, and vilified.