If there happens to be a multitude of griefs upon you, individual and collective, or fast and slow, or small and large, add equal parts of these considerations:
– that the broken heart can cover more territory.
– that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands.
– that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life.
– that grief is gratitude.
– that water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community.
– that the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction.
– that death might be the only freedom.
– that your grief is a worthwhile use of your time.
– that your body will feel only as much as it is able to.
– that the ones you grieve may be grieving you.
– that the sacred comes from the limitations.
– that you are excellent at loving.

It’s fear or love, period. Fear is: I want to leave a legacy, so I got to work hard now. But it’s like, are you afraid that you are insignificant now and that just being present is not good enough? Love is: I’m accepting today. I don’t care about what tomorrow is. Yesterday happened. If I accept today and be the best that I can today, each day that I have that opportunity to be my best, that will be my legacy. I don’t have to compete with anyone. This is who I am. This is what I can do. This is what I choose to do with my time here today.

1. Don’t be half in half out of the conversation. Be in it or out of it.
2. Don’t pontificate. Stating an opinion without the opportunity for response, argument or discussion. Enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn. Set aside your personal opinion. Everyone you meet knows something that you don’t. Everyone is an expert in something.
3. Who, what, where, when, how? Let them describe it.
4. Go with the flow. Thoughts will come and go.
5. If you don’t know, say that you don’t know. Talk should not be cheap.
6. Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they’re talking about the time they lost a family member, don’t start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they start talking about the trouble they’re having at work, don’t start talking about how you hate your job. It’s never the same. All experiences are individual.
7. Try not to repeat yourself. It can come across as condescending and it’s really boring. We tend to do it a lot in work situations and conversations with our kids.
8. Stay out of the weeds. People don’t care about the minutiae. What they care about is you.
9. Listen. This is the most important. • If your mouth is open you’re not learning – Budda and every Dad there ever was. • No man ever listened his way out of a job – Calvin Coolidge.
10. Be brief. • A good conversation is like a mini skirt; short enough to maintain interest, but long enough to cover the subject. Be interested in other people. Everyone has some hidden amazing thing about them. Go out, talk to people and prepare to be amazed.