They’re the wrong questions if you want to be happy, anyway. I am absolutely positive life is not about accumulating money and stuff. Are there the basic necessities of keeping a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator and clothes on your back? Absolutely. But once those needs are met and you’re not scrambling to make ends meet, your happiness quotient is not going to expand in any kind of correlation to your bank account. If you’re not happy on the inside, nothing external will fix that. And if a person isn’t thankful for everything they already have, they’re not going to be satisfied with more. If you can’t take the time to eat a slice of pie and really savor it, a whole pie isn’t going to help you with that. Because it will never be enough. If you don’t fill the void with love, it’s a bottomless pit.

Loving well is an art. It takes constant practice and study and patience and a willingness to be totally vulnerable. You have to expose the soft underbelly of your heart and offer it up. It requires listening well. Seeing well. And it means figuring out how to do those things for yourself, too. Love doesn’t control or manipulate or cling. It accepts and it surrenders with grace, with understanding. Love celebrates truth, and sometimes love is required to let go. Love wants to lift us up, to say yes! Go, do that thing that’s burning within you, whether I get to come along or I’m left to watch you shine from afar. Love honors us and says, of course you can. Loving well means walking through the world with your hands, heart, mind and eyes wide open. And love is inside of everyone. Sometimes people have to dig deeply to uncover it, but I believe we’re all made of the stuff, and learning to love well simply involves realizing that.

Living fully is so much about listening to your heart, to your intuition, to that YES inside you that’s bursting to come out. About recognizing that every single day is a gift to be opened and relished, and hopefully, received as another chance to spread more love. To finding your purpose, your gifts, and sharing them everywhere you go, to the best of your ability. Living fully involves presence, awareness, engagement and a desire to take nothing for granted. No smile, no touch on the arm, no rushed goodbye on the way out the door.

And letting go is embracing the reality that everything, everything is in a constant state of change. Nothing is certain except that nothing is certain. That scares the sh&t out of most people and it’s so understandable. But we are not in control. We do not get to decide what will happen and what won’t happen. All we can do is move toward healing and love, over and over again. All we can do is love with our whole hearts and try with everything we’ve got to shine as brightly as we can for as long as we’ve got. To help each other. To lend a hand, a shoulder, whatever is needed. Each day we are given an opportunity to practice. Each day we have a chance to move from love. The more we’re able to do that, the happier the day will be. If you can string a whole bunch of those together, that’s a formula for a very happy life. Make sure you’re living answers to the questions that are going to feed your soul. And have a gorgeous day. Sending you so much love, as I always am, Ally Hamilton