“Come sit down for a moment” said the rock. I hesitated. It was getting late, the sun set and blue hazes enveloped the valley. Soon they would turn black and Chris would get worried, then angry. I should go home.

“No, come, sit. It’s important” the rock insisted. I gave in. I was not hard to convince. I did not want to go be a human again, a proper human in a proper house, separated from the darkness, from the wildness, from the night.

Separated. Humans call it “protected”.

It was not hard to convince me, I have learned that rocks do not call me for no reason. Trees, mountains – they only speak when there is something to say. Something important.

I climbed up the craggy mountain side, just high enough to see the sky over the tips of pine trees, and settled on a boulder. The boulder was quiet, the mountain, the pine trees held a silence in which nothing could disturb their presence. A silence without words, without thoughts, without distractions, and in this silence I felt myself so clearly, I was myself so distinctly.

“Oh, I want to stay!” I thought with longing and desperation, “I never want to leave. I want to stay here, where I am myself so easily, so effortlessly. I want to stay here with you!”.

“This is how you are” said the rock. “Look, this silence, this presence, your presence that takes on a human form. This is you. The silence we hold you hold. Anywhere. Here you share it with us. There, with humans, among all the noise, you hold it. It is you.

Wherever you are – you do not stop being you.”

In the immortal words of legally blonde Elle Woods: “happy people don’t kill others, they just don’t!”

Fill yourself with happiness!

You, do it yourself, for yourself.

Feel yourself, feel the wonder of your existence, the great adventure that is your life. Feel it and find pleasure in it, find your own pleasure, your own bliss. Find your own happiness.

You, do it yourself, for yourself.

Fill yourself with love and it will spill over and spread around you touching others, opening, inspiring, inviting. Your own happiness, your own love, your own bliss is the healing force, the transforming power.

Find your own love. Find your happiness. You. Do it yourself, for yourself and the world will change.

I have doctors who are responsible for my health. Dentists for my teeth, internists for the rest of me (unless I want to get more specific). Dieticians are responsible for my diet, trainers are responsible for the fitness of my body, gurus are responsible for the fitness of my soul while psychologists are responsible for my mind, and my boss and clients are responsible for providing me with means to feed and shelter my body.

My parents are responsible for my life, life couches are responsible for fixing it. My partners and children are responsible for making me feel loved, wanted and valuable, my friends are responsible for my feeling supported.

What am I responsible for?

“There is something really off about this whole concept of privacy” I mused. I dug and pondered, for there was something to dig for. Oh yes, we all know that certain things “just are” private and that we “just have” the right to keep them so but … just why? Just why, I wondered.

“It is, in part, to keep people out” I concluded. Not sharing myself, not showing myself to others so that I don’t have to deal with their response, their opinion, their reaction. Privacy is to keep myself safe and comfortable. But that is not a “right” – that is a trauma. Just trauma. And I don’t want that.

O yes, I have an abundance of this particular trauma, I roll into a tiny ball and pretend to be dead as soon as a streanger’s shadow falls over me but I will not protect that, I will not defend it, I will not call it my right. I will heal it.

I will heal my life, in my life, during my life, my every day life, so that I don’t need the right to be private, so that I don’t need to hide for safety. So that I can be open and present in my life, and with my life. And with everyone.