Dear Me:

Flee specious “requirements” in your life. Think about what is honestly mandatory, absolutely required for survival, health, sanity, legal purposes or whatever. Don’t be dragged into what other people say is right without considering whether it’s right for you and for the world as well, or influenced into doing and being things that have nothing to do with your own real values and needs. Decide what does make sense for your efforts, and do the work that it requires.

Especially, find the most palatable, preferably appealing, ways you can to accomplish those ends. If you’re to spend any of your time and labor and energies on doing Necessary stuff, you really ought to be doing it by the most pleasurable means possible. Life offers enough pokes in the eye that can’t be avoided, so why subject ourselves to any we can sidestep? Rather nicer to seek out the ways in which we can accomplish our goals, meet our needs, achieve the desired ends, by doing things we enjoy and surrounding ourselves with good people and environments. The more enjoyable the compulsory and obligatory parts of life are, the more quickly and happily we complete them. The more swiftly we cover those bases, the more time we have for doing and being the things we prefer and desire most. Follow the example of those greats whose accomplishments are or were shaped by both their pursuit of natural abilities and inclinations and their will to open new doors and find new loves. It’s my belief that work is one of the most egregious four-letter words ever invented, that minimizing the work I absolutely have to do in life and, further, converting any so-called work I can’t avoid doing into something I like doing anyway are highly honorable goals. Paradoxically, I suppose, that’s something I’m willing to work at constantly.

Love, your constant friend and co-worker, Myself