My credit card is maxed out. I can barely afford my trips to school and my dearest Mother is very upset with me. But I am happy because I am exactly where I need to be and I am doing exactly what I wish to be doing . This is making my life richer. 

What is maturity if not the ability to make one’s own decisions? I wake up now and I think, I am alive, I am here still, this beautiful blessing of life is given me again. And it is meaning more and more, this life that I have been gifted, this time that I have, this immense love that I know not how to comprehend. It is becoming the more beautiful and I think my class is helping me see things in this light. 

I have always been interested in going to school to improve the mind rather than to acquire some degree. We all have opinions, I have plenty. But I am learning that when it comes to our lives, we really have to listen to ourselves. That we cannot please those who do not really take pleasure in seeing us for who we are, or those who do not care to see us become our best selves. 

It is important to listen more to our own intuitions, to seek our own paths: to love ourselves enough to appear like fools in doing what it takes to find our own true path; to love ourselves enough to dare to do what makes us passionate; to love ourselves enough to only invite into it things and people who make it richer; to love ourselves enough to remove the things and the people who ruin it; to love ourselves enough to forgive those who hurt us and wish us ill; to love ourselves enough to forgive ourselves. 

As I write this I am filled with immense happiness and I wish I could share the feeling with everyone. What a wonderful thing that would be! *_*

—
J. A. Odartey