I was a very naive teenager and young adult.
Good and kind, to be sure, but definitely lacking in worldly wiseness.
I think my cousins thought I was lacking in common sense, being practical country folk themselves.
They would have thought I was always dreaming of some invisible thing which they neither saw nor cared about.
My first job was at the local supermarket packing shelves.
I was nineteen and doing my University studies.
I was very excited to get a real job and felt I was becoming more grown up and sophisticated.
Never could a job have been less suited to a person.
Although I started out with the best of intentions, I found packing shelves heavy, boring, and soul destroying.
I also found the atmosphere of the supermarket stifling and distressing.
Unfortunately and unintentionally, from about my third shift, every time I went to work I got ill within an hour or so.
I would develop such a debilitating headache that I would have to ask to go home.
It was embarrassing.
After this happened three times in a row, the boss must have felt that I was an inadequate employee and he never gave me any more shifts.
It was an utter failure.
Yay - I didn't have to go anymore! Shelf packing and supermarkets were not for me.
I needed to find a way of being in life that would not destroy me and would also allow me to bring my own particular presence to the world.
No-one can tell us how to do that.
We have to find it ourselves.
We are the only ones who can hear the tiny voice inside us which beckons, "Come this way.
" Anyone who has more than one child can tell you that, when raised exactly the same way, children turn out very differently.
I always wanted my children to have a humanitarian career, like me.
My first son announced at twelve that he would go into finance, which is exactly what he did go into.
He recalls me saying in serious concern at the time, "Are you sure you want to go into that career?" He was sure.
My daughter decided, also at a young age, that she would work in hair and fashion, which she did for a number of years.
Couldn't someone be humanitarian? I gave up and gave no further thought to what I wished my children to do, knowing that they only had to find the inner, whispering voice to know which way to go.
That voice is only accessible to the one who houses it.

You have got to know what it is you want! Or someone is going to sell you a bill of goods somewhere along the line that will do irreparable damage to your self-esteem, your sense of worth, and your stewardship of talents that God gave you.
Richard Nelson Bolles

Protecting Our Path First we must find our path but then, equally importantly, we must learn to protect it.
Everywhere we look, at every point, we will find others who will work against our progression.
We cannot rely on other people to protect and promote our abilities and purpose.
Even loved ones may not be able to see what we have inside us, or they may be uncomfortable about it, or they may become nervous that some ability will take us from them, or they may be unconsciously jealous of some ability that they would love to have but can't quite master at the moment.
All of this can lead to even friends and family unconsciously, but nevertheless deliberately, working against the unfoldment of certain forward moving things in our life.
When we understand this, we take responsibility for our own life and we do not allow other people to harm us or our path.
Everyone has to deal with this because, not too far under the surface, most everyone struggles with insecurity, comparative thinking, ambition, and fear.
Being human will guarantee that.
We are here to recognize and outgrow these inbuilt aspects of the human nature.
As individual students of life we try to see it in ourselves and others and we are thereby protected from it.
We forgive it as inevitable but at the same time we sidestep it.
Sometimes, we remove the source of jealousy from our life (depending on the caustic nature or otherwise of the person).
Insecure and unfulfilled people cannot help but be jealous.
Only inner security and individual fulfillment as a person will reduce jealousy until one day it disappears.
It will be replaced by a calm confidence, a steady happiness, a strong resilience, and an interesting, beautiful life.