My Great Big Secret Message From Earth

How's that for persistence? That's right, four years ago today I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages. Do I feel any better? Not really. I'm 61, look 71 and feel 81 and that has nothing to do with alcohol. Is that personal enough for you? Am I sharing or what?

As a matter of fact, not drinking alcohol for four years showed me just how unimportant alcohol is. What alcohol does best is give you a false sense of whatever it is you thought you weren't getting. Happiness, euphoria, importance, love, affection, glory, warmth, success. Who needs a false sense of something when you can have the real thing by working for it or towards it? 

They say alcohol makes you lose your inhibitions. Well, a lot of inhibitions are kept at bay for very good reasons and if alcohol brings them out then my advice to you is to leave alcohol alone altogether. My experience has shown that when you imbibe alcohol you become somebody you're not and that's almost opposite from what the drinking world tells you. Why wouldn't they tell you a lie? They sell you your alcohol.

The real you is who you are when you are alone with just your thoughts. And you certainly don't need alcohol, or any other drug, to take you there. If being yourself is who you really are, without having your thoughts altered by substances or adjusted by others, then you've already arrived at your destination. Nurture that personality and watch it grow.

My Better Half

One of the things I find the most interesting about other people is that they're unpredictable sometimes. The predictable part of anyone is quite often nothing more than a label he or she has been forced to live up to in order to get by or to survive or to compete in life. But that's only half the story.

The other half of any person, the part that isn't labeled, is always up for discovery, if anyone's interested enough to do the work. That half is unlabeled because it's the part of any person where assumptions have no power. That's the part of people I like the best. The real part, not the part that fate or other people assigned to them in life. It's the part they choose for themselves. It's the part they'll defend with their lives. And it's always the best part.

I've got another half, too. The real part of me. That's the part of me that doesn't fit in a file folder or a box or a pigeonhole or under anyone's thumb. The part that can never be predicted because it's too dynamic. You can decide for yourself which is which because that's your job, not mine.

I already know which is the real me. It's the part of me I know and like the best. It's the part of me that still loves life and the part that still finds the universe worth exploring. But it's also the part of me that no one should ever mess with.

Once people discover that there's another half to everyone, they're on their way to realizing that the undiscovered half of a person is almost, without question, made up of many smaller parts. And they're the best parts of any person. They're the pieces you can't take apart.