Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
I'm living the exact life I planned on living when I was five. My life has taken some turns and changes that I didn't anticipate, and it has brought me different things. I thought material things would bring me happiness, which they didn't. But through this, I have learned what things are important and what aren't.
I see an insidious problem in the marketing of weddings as 'the happiest day of your life.' The pressure that is placed upon this event to be the alpha and omega of your entire existence makes it, I think, into a kind of nuptial New Year's Eve, and we all know how that usually turns out.
The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, 'Daddy, I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.
It's very hard to find true friends when your life is a bumpy ride full of twists and turns. But, I'm glad that amidst all the ramblings in my life I have managed to win some great friends.
It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.
One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.
Going by my past journey, I am not certain where life will take me, what turns and twists will happen; nobody knows where they will end up. As life changes direction, I'll flow with it.
Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but that's part of the game.
It wouldn't be a Carrie Underwood album without a revenge song on it. People really like when I do that. I don't mean to. I don't hate men that much. But it turns out so well!