As it turns out, Everyday is more often than I think.
It is ongoing, to do something Everyday,
every 24 hours, every time you look up,
every time you awake, if you live...

When I was in Hawaii, I had the opportunity to leave the safe tourist zone, and visit long untamed   beaches.  I saw waves, easily ten feet high, crashing into the shore. In the distance, I also saw people who lived nearby, swimming, laughing, bobbing easily on the deep ocean as it pulsed with life. When one is surrounded with greatness, it is clear how insignificant one is, and yet, how much we all are a part of the larger universe. Harmony is about understanding and accepting the truth of a thing. Greatness is the recognition that what is within you is as large and complex as the universe around you. So when on days you’re feeling small, go ahead, find a way to immerse yourself in greatness. It will remind you of who you are.

How much of our stressful culture do we pass on to our children? I question that children always do what we say- but they definitely do what we do. I have often seen myself unintentionally following the patterns of my parents. I’m sure that I am passing information on to my own children as well, but I don’t know which messages are getting through.

Some years ago, I built a tree house with my son. I did this because I traveled extensively and I wanted him to remember us doing something together. I also did this because I didn’t want him to perceive his mom as a mad woman who was forever stressed out, always running to save everyone’s world but her own...

When I think of how I completed my high school diploma or my scant knowledge of biology, it occurs to me that I didn’t acquire it all in a day. It took years of repetition, learning something here, reading something there, a little at a time until I completed the course. I walked to school Monday through Friday, rain or shine. Once I got there, they would teach us one more thing. Whether dull or exciting, Latin root words or frog dissection, at the end of the day, great or small, something was done. Over the Fall season, a class was completed and I had a basic knowledge of the English language, or the anatomy of amphibians. After twelve years of this, I received a piece of paper indicating that I had the audacity to finish something, and was probably qualified to go on to finish other things in life.

Today, when I list all the goals I want to accomplish, the list seems long and daunting. But then I remember, some of my best accomplishments were completed in small consistent steps, like a class.

I went in to work facing mountains of paper and lists of things to do. It was an avalanche waiting to crush me. I sat in a chair, staring straight ahead. I started to work on a small piece of it. It felt like trimming the toenail of a giant I could not conquer. 
I went home to another range of mountains. This time, many were posing as harmless crops and fields to be cultivated for the proverbial greater good or a seemingly worthy cause.  But, I thought, All of this is killing me, slowly, deliberately, one stressful toxin at a time. I could feel myself suffocating, sweating; headache and exhaustion from the thought of it; fear of a new mountain pushing its head up through a volcanic floor. I needed to move away from the mountains, or move the mountains away from me, or close the admissions window to all new mountain-creating customers...