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Authentic love is my concept of love. It extends far beyond romantic love or even consummate love shared with a life partner.

To me, love in the broadest sense of the word is everything good; it is the unconditional force for good. It is pure and resolute, with no self-serving agenda, with no degrees or deviation. It is both passion and peace. It is responsibility and freedom, strength and tenderness, rock solid and transparent. It is defenseless and invulnerable! It is neither pride nor shame. It is fearless, unifying, compassionate, and healing. It is mine, yours, nobody’s, and everybody’s.

It can’t be seen, or touched, or quantified; but it is everywhere. It is everything. It is the only thing that matters.

We talk about love loosely, but we know what it really is! We know when we actually feel it, because love permeates our being. It IS our being, our core essence.

Often we dismiss it, rather than sit with it. We busy ourselves with less. And afraid that our worth is measured in what can be quantified, we pursue money, appearance, and formal education, as well as the sex that validates them.

But what can be seen and touched is created by the ego, as part of that defense for our perceived inadequacy.… More

In the midst of this pandemic, excuses may be more assumed than they’ve ever been in your lifetime. That is, unless you survived the stock market crash of 1929; in which case, your age is another convenient excuse.

You can hide behind too old, too young, not enough money or no time, but there is no good excuse.

If there is something you want to do that you are not doing, all of your excuses come down to fear. And if Franklin D. Roosevelt were alive, he’d remind you that, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He delivered those famous words during his inaugural address in the height of the Depression.

Roosevelt’s gift is to strip us of our excuses regardless of the situation, so that we might face our ultimate fear … and realize that we have nothing to be afraid of.

People didn’t jump off buildings because their estates were devalued; they jumped because they felt like they were devalued.

Following the last recession, a billboard in NYC read, “Recession 101: Self-worth beats net-worth.”

Want to know how you’re doing on self-worth? With “1” indicating that you strongly disagree and “5” indicating that you strongly agree, what number (1-5) best describes your position on Roosevelt’s statement, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”?… More