“Forty-Four Circles Around the Sun: Lessons in Grace, Growth, and Gratitude”

Each birthday (and today is my 44th!) invites reflection—on what I’ve learned, what I hold dear, and how I want to walk forward with greater clarity, courage, and grace.

1. Family remains the heartbeat of my life. Everything expands outward from there.

2. Peace is born not of forgetting, but of transforming pain into wisdom. As the poet Rumi wrote, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” True healing asks for patience. The strength to sit with what shattered before building what’s next. In that stillness, empathy becomes architecture.

3. Kindness is the simplest form of greatness. In a world that rewards noise and self-interest, being kind is an act of quiet rebellion. To be kind is not naïve, it is powerful, brave, and radical.

4. Belief comes before ability.  You must believe in yourself first. As Virgil said: “They can because they think they can.”

5. Viktor Frankl wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” True freedom begins in that stillness; the ability to choose, rather than react.
7. “Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” — W.H. Auden
Discipline is the scaffolding of greatness.  The ambitious mind builds freedom through structure, knowing that mastery is born from repetition refined by intent.

8. Don’t mistake busyness for purpose. The most meaningful work often comes in stillness.

9. Boredom is a doorway. Beyond it lies imagination, innovation, and new play.

10. Success is not scale; it’s alignment. Build things that feel true.

11. Friendship is sacred ground.
Plato called it the highest love. Honor it with loyalty, enrich it with generosity, and keep it alive with joy.

12. The most important voice to consult is the quiet one within.

13. Play is not frivolous. Making space for play is not escaping life; it is deepening it.

14. Let beauty interrupt you. A sunset, a song, a child’s question—each is a summons back to the present.

15. Live in a way that makes both the child you once were and the person you are becoming proud.

Here’s to another circle around the sun ! ☀️