On New Year’s day, a dear friend of mine reminded me about a technique she uses to let go of worry and fear.  She lives in the United States where they celebrate New Year’s Day each year with the Rose Bowl college football game and the Tournament of Roses parade.

The Rose Bowl is a 110 year tradition held in Pasadena, California and is nationally televised. She and a dear friend of hers have made watching the Tournament of Roses parade an annual tradition. Both of them have a habit that usually makes everyone smile when they hear about it, but which to them, makes total sense.

For five minutes before the parade, they sit in silence and do all their worrying for the year.

Usually, their laughter over this suggestion precludes any silence at all because, as they explain, it’s fruitless to waste any time in worrying!  “Hurrying and worrying are one of the greatest insults to all that is good and right. It’s like putting a frosting made from something that’s really yucky over the sweet cake that life really is,” says one of the ladies.  “We realize that worrying or hurrying goes against the goodness that is life’s reality, so we’ve made a joke about doing our worrying for five minutes each year before the parade begins.”

Would this technique work for you?  All you’d have to do is look back over any of the hurrying or worrying that you’ve done in your life time and see if it has accrued anything good at all.  Has it?  I’m seriously doubting that anyone can say “Oh yes, worry and fear has caused such good in my life!”  On the contrary, hurrying and worrying go against all that is good, and place a speed bump in the road of your progress.  So why not consider spending five minutes on the first day of each year to get it out of the way for the year and then move into living a rich, full life filled with possibility?

Using a Surrender Box is another technique along the same lines as the above tool.  A surrender box is a tool which allows you to surrender your concepts that stop you from moving forward. You might use a shoe box. You might find a wonderfully carved wooden box. Place it in a special place so that it becomes part of the décor and only you know what its true use is.

We all recognize that life brings to our experiences moments of overwhelm when the things we think we have to accomplish get so jumbled in our minds that we cannot see our way to any practical solution. We might think that by juggling dozens of ideas in our minds, we keep things in the forefront so they can be accomplished, but they might actually be delayed because we’re holding on to too much!

Here’s where the surrender box idea comes into play. Write down what you want to have happen and place the note into a box.  When you do this, you have actively set your intention to accomplish the task into action.  You give yourself the permission you need to quit fretting over that problem, and know that in the process of life itself, it will get done because that’s what you desire.

I want to caution you that some people think “the universe” is taking care of whatever is placed into that box.  No, dear friends, you are the universe, and it’s your intention to accomplish that gets the job done. I want each of you to be aware that it’s you and your mind that is the higher power. Putting your worry and fear into a surrender box allows you to surrender any sense of burden, hurry, worry or a push to achieve, yet allows you to remain present in each moment so that you can automatically take the steps required – now seen more clearly – toward the accomplishment of your desire.

When you realize that you are manifesting your dreams, your desires, and that life itself will create the path for their accomplishment, using a surrender box is a prop, a tool, to help you to undo your burdensome sense of worry and fear.  It allows you to step out of your own way so that what you desire that is right and good can manifest. You’ll be delighted to return to the box every few months, pull out the slips you’ve put into it, and see just how many you’ve completed!

We spend much of our lives asking very basic life questions and searching for answers:

• Who am I?
• Why am I here?
• What is Truth?
• What am I supposed to do?
• What’s my passion?
• Am I valuable?
• What makes me truly happy?

I am confident everyone who reads that list is nodding their head in agreement, and maybe you’re thinking “Oh, I know one you missed!”  I am also confident that each of you has spent a fair amount of time thinking about what the right answers are for you, individually.  Have you discovered the answers for yourself yet?

I cannot tell you the answers for you. I can only discover the answers are for me. But what I can tell you are some general thoughts about the questions.

The questions have to be answered. They arise up within each of us and pose a problem that has to be solved if we are to experience harmony.  No individual will find peace or rest until he or she forms a settles sense about the questions…for a time…because the questions and their answers are multi-layered, and we discover the layers sequentially.

The answers to life questions cannot be found in only one place; they can be found like clues in many places, some of them rather surprising, like bumper stickers, for example.  They represent truth, and since truth is universal and infinite, it simply cannot be contained in one place, one psychology, one religion, one building, one nation….  I feel quite confident you get my sense.

The answers to the questions have to be verified from within your Self. You may be searching for the answers (one of life’s truly fun little games) and when you think you’ve got it, you go inside of yourself and ask another question “Is this right?” You listen to your Self for its answer to validate or discard what you think is the answer.  This would make you the ultimate authority on the answers.  Even your agreement with the answers from any other leaves you as the ultimate authority.

The answers change as you unfold greater understanding. The apostle, Paul, tried to explain this for us when he said “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.”  A toddler might think what truly makes him happy is a bright, blue ball. That changes as he unfolds an understanding of “there is more.”

There will be many distractions and diversions while you are searching for answers. Even an individual who dedicates his or her entire life to discovering what Life Itself is all about, becomes distracted by the lure of the sirens:  a show on TV, friends calling to play, a really good book. And so, while we may take these detours, if the questions remain unanswered, it will set up a level of unrest within you that will niggle and tickle you until you get back and work on them some more.

There is more found in silence than in sound. When the band is playing, the whistle is blowing, the horns are blaring and the babies are crying for our attention, we lose the silence.  In the silence is the communication between the Self and Itself Within. Muffling the external sounds so that you can participate in your own silence, is an assist to the discovery of the answers. If you are searching for answers to some very basic life questions, try listening to the silence.

Each month, when I sit down to think about what I want to write for you, I contemplate what’s going on for me.  I often think that what I write for you is what I most need to see in my life, and this month is no exception.  I honestly believe that what is common among us all resonates within each of us, because each of us belongs to the family of man and as such, can experience this magical thinking.

And so, what’s important for me this month? If I were to celebrate the discovery that led me to the greatest, most significant expression of all that is good in my life, it would be this:

My experiences are an expression of thoughts I’ve thought.

Others have said it like this:  What you think is what you get.

Because I have worked with this idea for a long time, it seems so apparent to me. I’d love it if you’d consider that your miracles are coming directly from your magical thoughts and here’s why:

You can control your experiences 100% by controlling what you think!

At first, when you begin watching this process, it might seem “coincidental.” After more watching, you’ll begin to see the truth that those miracles are being created by your magical thinking.

I realize that others have a very different take on life and they attribute miracles in their experiences to a variety of other causes – some religious, some familial, some hereditary. Here’s a story that illustrates this:

A man goes to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist asks him what’s wrong.
The man says “Isn’t it obvious? I’m dead – I’m a corpse.”
The psychiatrist says “But you walked in here – can corpses walk?”
The man says “Haven’t you ever seen a zombie movie? Of course corpses can walk.”
So the psychiatrist says “But we’re talking – do corpses talk?”
The man says “What kind of a question is that? Of course corpses can talk!”
Finally, the psychiatrist gets an idea. With a crafty look in his eye, he asks the man “Do corpses bleed?”
The man thinks for a moment, and then says “No, no, corpses don’t bleed. After all, we’re dead, so we can’t bleed.” Before the man can react, the psychiatrist reaches over and pricks him on the hand with a needle and a small drop of blood emerges from under his skin. The man stares at the blood in amazement.

“Well I’ll be damned,” the man says. “Corpses do bleed!”

To be open to the possibility that I have this much control increases the likelihood that I’ll experience what I think.  Some people call this magical thinking.  I call it learning life’s rules and using them for a healthy, wealthy, abundant life.

Whenever you look toward and affiliate yourself with this power of mind (regardless of what name you call it) and you have the intention to understand it more clearly, this is the time when miracles enter into your life.

Christmas time is one of those miracles, where we focus on “things loving” and, amazingly, loving things happen!  Let’s all have a merry Christmas this year, with a stronger conscious awareness of how it’s happening – with our magical thinking.

Giving of  yourself is the greatest gift of all at Christmastime.  ~ Anonymous

~ Anthony J. D’Angelo

We all try to be brave, keep moving forward, and keep a stiff upper lip. Our parents and teachers encourage us in this direction. But sometimes, things just feel overwhelming and we want to wallow in self pity. That’s when the Pity Party starts and it’s okay, as long as you learn from doing it and don’t stay in that mode for days without end.

In those dark days when the bad seems to outweigh the good, we let our doubt and fear run rampant. We begin to think there’s no solution. We think things are not fair. We indulge that “Why me?” idea.

Everything that happens in our lives brings a lesson along with it. I have thought that perhaps the lesson from “bad stuff” happening is: my thinking must be way off track. Since what I think is what I get, I can turn this around by changing my thinking back toward normal, which is the good.

One of the blessings that comes along when you feel sorry for yourself and indulge in a Pity Party is that it is so uncomfortable inside that party, after being down for awhile, you begin to look for ways to stop feeling victimized; stop feeling like you are the kicking boy of fate. You run a whole bunch of scenarios through your mind, mostly negative because you feel so powerless and angry, as ways to quit feeling uncomfortable. Those who aren’t fatalistic enough to put an end to their lives usually discover a solution, begin to take the steps toward resolution, and they end up building fabulous character.

I think self pity serves a good purpose. It’s a way to sort of cave in on yourself, bury yourself in your own thinking, entertain a wide variety of ideas that may or may not be solutions, cast aside the ones that you know are silly or useless, and whittle down your options until you find that one perfect idea that you know that you can begin to take action on and subsequently get yourself out of your funk.

I wouldn’t indulge in Pity Parties for too long, though. Running all those emotions through your mind can be exhausting! Don’t sit in judgment on yourself if you have ideas about guilt, embarrassment or harsh judgment. A Pity Party is a process, a good process. Yes, it’s self-indulgent, but it’s also a way to sort through your options. It might help you to record or write out your feelings. It will help make your options more clearly visible; at the end, you can destroy what you’ve recorded or written down. You might “whine” at a close friend who can provide good feedback to help you find a solution.

Here’s a little tip I’ve learned about Life that might help you when the next Pity Party event happens. I recognized that less-than-good things change. I also learned that truly good things never change. So if an unpleasant experience arises, and you are overwhelmed by emotions that are uncomfortable, and you dip down into that self pity mode, these are less-than-good things than can change. And they change back to truly good things because truly good things are the norm.

You’d be really well served to keep track of all the good that exists in your life. Since what you think about is what you create more of, you can let go of having Pity Parties and think something so much better into existence.

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.” ~ Lucille Ball

Constant worry is a trait that many of us have – but it doesn’t have to be that way.
When each of us was born, we were given the most magnificent gift and the ability and freedom to use it in any manner that we prefer.  This most precious present was given to us gratis and one of the things we are doing silently and invisibly while we learn to walk, talk, read, etc. is to use this fabulous, free gift.

Let me pique your curiosity right away:  the gift I’m talking about is your mind. It’s rather unfortunate that very few of us learn the proper use of this greatest of gifts.  There is no blame to be placed on those who taught us.  If those who taught them had known, we’d all have been blessed with this knowledge lo, many generations back.

I’d like to set the story straight for this generation and those that follow:  the secret not often told about this great Mind gift, is that when you use your mind positively, your mind creates positive things. When you use your mind negatively, your mind creates evil things.  It’s unfortunate that not more of us know this, but, now you know, so please spread the word!

Your mind is pristine, pure, and untouched when you are born. If at that time, we could have been taught to only think those thoughts that would help us, life would be so different. But some of us were taught to hurry and to worry, and this use of mind is so unfortunate.  The story of Job tells about a man who worried and “his own worst fear came upon him.”  In today’s vernacular: If you use your mind to worry, you will create with that mind the same thing you are worrying about.”

Why Do People Worry?

Some people have constant worry as a chronic habit. One lady told me “My grandmother taught me to worry.”  Do you recognize that your worries come from your fears, and that neither worry nor fear ever created one good thing? This is using your precious mind gift to create something you do not want! Worry makes you feel awful internally.

Some people worry because they feel like they’re not in control of their lives. They don’t understand that all of life’s challenges can be met with positive thinking, so the things they worry about unnecessarily take up the time during which they can use their minds to create a bettered experience for themselves and their loved ones. Constant worry affects your mind as well as your body.

Some people worry because they are anticipating the worst:  they’ll fail a test, they’ll never meet their right mate; they’ll never have enough money, etc.  They look into the future and it’s covered with black clouds.

Could you begin to entertain the idea of stopping the fear, the hurry, the worrying?

Next time you begin to worry, you could make yourself consciously aware that you’re headed down this dead end street again, and use your precious gift to visualize a bettered result. Wrap yourself and your loved one in thoughts of peace, joy, success and use your mind gift to create it. If you can confront the things that are making you worry, chose another action that will resolve the situation. Ascend into your own power and then you won’t have a reason to have constant worry in your life.

“Worry is like a rocking chair–it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” ~ Anonymous

Addiction, in it’s broadest sense, can include enslavement to watching Soap Operas, drinking too much coffee, eating too much sugar, spending too many hours at work, obsessive dieting or exercising or shopping, too much sex or having an urgent need to always being in a relationship in addition to substance abuse.

When an individual is addicted, he will set common sense aside in favor of his addiction of choice.

Warning Signs of Addiction – Looking to something outside of ourselves to feel good is the reverse to looking inside ourselves to feel good.  The later is correct.  The first is addiction. If something (a drug, a hot fudge sundae) makes us feel good, our brain releases chemicals.  Feeling “high” as a result begins to be strongly anticipated, and pursuing this “high” makes us begin to avoid those who love us (parents, friends, even spouses.) Addicts begin to lie and cheat to obtain whatever it is that makes them high and some have said they get a strong “high” just from stealing to get the drug than they did when they ingested it. Here are some more warning signs of addiction:

• Overly dramatized moodiness
• Reversal of personal habits
• Disinterested in things formerly interested in
• New group of friends (with bad habits)
• Problems with finances and the law
• Unexcused absences from work
• Vulgarity or profanity used often
• Keeping themselves hidden from others

Who Is Most At Risk for Addiction

If you consider the four main elements in an individual’s life (physical, mental, emotional, and social) you will see these behaviors rampant in those who are typically addicted:

• A genetic inclination due to history of addiction with an extreme sensitivity to drugs.
• A psychological tendency toward low self-esteem or a history of depression and feeling like a victim.
• An overwhelming sense of strong emotions, like grief or anger.
• A feeling of aloneness in the midst of many family members or work associates.

Are You Addicted – Here are some questions to ask yourself to see if you’re an addict in any way. Honesty is strongly suggested.

• Others have told you you’re an addict.  Can you stop that behavior for a day, a week, forever?
• Do you become uncomfortable at the thought of not doing the behavior others call your addiction?
• Would you somehow feel “less than” if you didn’t do that behavior?
• Have you tried stopping that behavior in the past unsuccessfully?
• Have you lost friends or alienated family members because you won’t stop that behavior?
• What’s in control – you or the behavior?
• Deep down inside you, would you prefer to keep doing the behavior?

If there is any behavior you cannot (or will not) set aside, then this behavior controls you and not the other way around.  If you’ve tried to break away from the behavior unsuccessfully but keep returning to it, it’s an addiction. When you are an addict, this is the cycle you’re going to repeat:

feeling good, a loss of control, repetition and then a feeling of denial.

Getting Help for Your Addiction – The first rule for getting healthy is to admit you have a problem (look strongly at those Warning Signs of Addiction) and find a professional to help you. This person will help you to see what changes are necessary to break your habits. You’ll be working to develop new behaviors where the old ones were and you’ll have a plan of action with due dates on it to keep you on track. Recovery takes time so exercise patience – a lot of patience – and keep track of every forward step you take.  If

you fall off the wagon, forgive yourself and get back on.

Your individuality is blessed. Paying attention to the warning signs of addiction and cleaning up your addiction will strengthen your character and put you back on the road toward greater success.  Wishing you well on your journey!

A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health. ~ Clarence Day

We are frequently quick to brush away an insult, a hurt or harsh words with a flick of our wrist and dismiss it with casual words like “That’s okay,” or “Not a problem.” Forgiving someone is more than just a reaction.

In actuality, those seemingly casual words may be carrying along two messages:

• I forgive you.

• It’s okay for you to hurt me repeatedly because I’ll just dismiss it.

As much as we wish this wouldn’t happen to us, we seem to be affected by the words and the actions of other people. They can tell immediately by the look on your face how you are reacting to their words and their actions. There isn’t one of us who wants others to know that we have hurt feelings, so we try to move away from them as rapidly as we can. Sometimes our “That’s okay,” or “Not a problem,” is an avoidance technique: we brush aside our own feelings because even we don’t want to feel them.

We use our “That’s okay,” or “Not a problem,” to quickly deflect our friends apologies which then gives them permission for the behavior to happen again. It’s subtle, I know, but it’s worth a good look to see if you are operating with this modus.

One of the first things that therapists recommend when you are trying to get a grip on your one wonderful life, is to sit with your feelings. To feel whatever it is you feel. If you are not consciously aware of what is happening, you can do nothing to change it!

This brushing away of negative emotions is a dismissal of our own feelings. They come because they bear great gifts. They tell us if we are hurt. We cannot change feeling hurt until we can admit that we are hurt. These negative emotions are a dismissal of the negative input of others. Dismissal carries the message “It’s okay if you hurt me.” As I said, it’s subtle, but it truly deserves your attention if you want your life and its experience to improve. Forgiving someone graciously is what is needed.

It requires far greater honesty than you are currently exercising, or you will remain running in circular patterns of behavior. In this cycle, without honesty interjected to stop it, you will continuously let people overstep themselves in our lives and offer pain, which we will then assume is our norm, and we will become victimized by this.

You can stop this chain of events by taking these steps:

• Thank them for their apology. You accept that they’ve asked you to forgive them.

• Next, you have to gently create more harmony in the relationship, by sharing how they made you feel.

• To honestly say “I felt like this (fill in the blank) when you said or did this (fill in the blank) gives you control.

• This permits them to see what they’ve caused.

• This permits you to see what happened inside you.

Trust and forgiveness go hand in hand. If your desire is to have a relationship that is spiritually deep, rewarding and fulfilling, this level of honesty will serve both parties well.

How we respond to others teaches them how they can act toward us. If we hurt, cry, and hide, this is what we teach them. If we say “I was hurt when you said/did this (fill in the blank) we teach them that we trust them enough to bear that they’ve caused us pain and that we can forgive them for it. Learn how forgiving someone will grow an honest relationship that is positive and empowering for both involved.

I would like to submit that the first things inherited traits from parents we receive is the manner in which they think.  We have no other basis in our early days, so that smiling face over our crib becomes our all. We seldom think to disagree with them until our ability to reason and our far-reaching experiences shows us that there may be another way than the way our parents presented.

Some studies on how traits are inherited say that a new baby relies on the thinking of his parents from 75 to 100% up to the age of reason.  As a child begins to reason (around age seven), the parent’s role should decrease so that their thinking dominates about 75% of the time and the child’s thinking is apparent 20% of the time.

Between the ages of seven and fourteen, the percentages level out to a 50-50 percentage, and when the teenage years predominate, the child’s thought grows to 75% strength and the parents diminish to 25%.  Hypothetically, by the age of 21, the child should be at 100% strength, and the parents should have gracefully bowed away, acknowledging their job has been completed.  I realize that some parents really struggle with the last of these stages!

Heredity is there throughout this process.  We look like our parents because we think as they do.  We have traits and habits like our parents, because we think as they do. As we get older, we get to decide whether our inherited traits from parents are acceptable to us.  We may keep some of their ways and reject others. This expresses the freedom of individuality and it behooves parents to understand this process and acquiesce to it. As Khalil Gibran so eloquently put it:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

As individuals with heredity running full course through our veins, we can consciously honor those wonderful traits we admire in our parents.  We can also consciously honor those we find more favorable doing in a manner that suits us better.  And as parents, we can understand how traits are inherited so that we can honor and support it in our children and make those teen age years less emotionally painful.

You are the one in charge of this process of becoming. You can control the traits from parents you truly want. You can also learn from their mistakes and make different decisions for your own life. It’s not necessary to be them.  It is necessary to be you – and that is one unique individual. Your parents gave you an incredible gift, the gift of life, the gift of learning from them. Whether you accept their gift – or perhaps it’s better said whatever percentage of the gift you decide to accept – is completely up to you.

People like Gandhi are always a joy to be around because they radiate calmness and joy regardless of the maelstrom that might be brewing around them. I have a strong sense that the US Navy Seals with difficult tasks have trained themselves to remain calm and be at peace or they’d never be able to accomplish those tasks. Their inner peace and the inner peace of others with inner peace inspire calmness around them.

From them we learn that we, too, can be calm, even when everything around us is topsy-turvy, because we know that no matter what happens, this inner sense of calm will help us to function well. I know that my readers have experienced copious amounts of times of confusion, so you now have learned that very these times enable us to find that part of ourselves that knows how to go inside toward inner peace, and how to shine a light of peace to others in the maelstrom.

It’s important to be grounded in our individual inner peace, so that we don’t allow ourselves to be thrown off balance by every piece of disturbing news that comes our way. We can govern both our emotions and the thinking that produced these emotions at times like the events of the past few weeks. If our feelings and thoughts activate one another in a hectic way, then we become caught up in the confusion that surrounds us. But if we can locate the inner peace at the center of our hearts, we can remain calm in almost any situation. In addition, we provide a safe place for our friends and family, and by using our ability to calmly reason with them, smooth out what they see as the confusion of a world in flux.

It is not important to completely understand what’s happening right now, nor do we need to be able to predict the future. We can rejoice over the good that’s been accomplished and find our way to being at peace with whatever happens, and this peace lives inside us. It can be brought forward through our choosing. We can foster its unfoldment and growth by cultivating our inner peace with meditation, journaling, and reading words that inspire us. It will lead you into the kingdom of heaven that is within and at hand, and you will become the king of that kingdom.

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub. ~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“The kingdom of harmony is within and at hand, and the king is in the kingdom.” ~ Unknown Source

I believe the talents of a culture enriches the family of man and the global community at large. If the concept of infinity exists, the only thing that could manifest it in its fullness would be the diversity of the tribes – those talents, skills, manners of living, ways of thinking, philosophies of being, scientific discoveries and the lessons of history – all these are forms of the learning that must happen to bring us into our own, individual awareness of the fullness of our own being.

Where would we be without the keen observations of the Asian races; the athletics and endurance of the Africans; the brilliant engineering of the Germans; the mining of rich oil resources from the Middle East, just to name a few?

You were born into the microcosm of your own personal family and all the learning from its generations.  You expanded into the learning from the family of your friends; and then ever outward into the learning in your schools, your cities, your heritage as a whole.  There are many rich endowments inside the family of man and here are some ways you can avail yourself of their richness. I invite you to Be the Change by becoming more!

Travel. If you’re blessed with discretionary funds, travel to as many places as you can and talk with the people.  Learn as much about them as you can.  Make an effort to speak their language. You’ll be viewed and tolerated like a child, but trying to speak always impresses them.

If you are not blessed with the funds to travel under the normal sense of travel, then do it through watching Documentaries or Travelogues.  Many libraries provide free Documentaries for their patrons.

Travel on a Budget. You can do some actual travelling by investigating the options for travelling on a budget.  Drive to the city next to yours if that’s what your budget allows and see if you can find five things you did not know about its population by talking to people. Take a small instrument with you like a Mouth Harp or a Harmonica.  Sit in the city square and begin to play.  Others will come and talk with you and it’s practically cost free.

Books. It seems almost silly to tell you about the wealth of knowledge that can be gleaned from books because I know you already know this.  Do you use your public library?  Do you download books from the internet?  Have you discovered www.Gutenberg.org there?

Movies. A wonderful way to travel is through the movies. Movies will teach you so much variety about the family of man.  Don’t just watch movies from your own culture.  Branch out and learn about others.

Internet Research. It’s also a bit silly to mention the internet, yet this is a miraculously abundant source to learn about the richness of the family of man.  Here’s a list of 16 internet research tips. Don’t use just one Search Engine.  Try at least five of them!

Learn a New Language. A wonderful way to enhance your comprehension about the Family of Man is to study languages.  Here’s a wonderful Czech proverb:

You live a new life for every new language you speak.
If you know only one language, you live only once.

Wishing you this: may your life add more to the Family of Man!