Happy Birthday Paps!

Today is my father’s birthday. I am very fortunate to have a father who is both youthful in spirit and positive in outlook. (At 82, he tap dances, plays tennis and still works as a consulting physician). His positive and optimistic view of life has, I suspect, not always been easy – life has given him some major hurdles to overcome – but he has consistently chosen to view life from a positive perspective, and when he can’t, to at least move his attention (and everyone else’s, if he’s given half a chance!) to finding the positive or the comical! In wishing him a Happy Birthday, I am reminded how his ‘emotional mastery’ has given me a strong reference for what it looks like, inspiring me to never give up endeavoring to grow - to ‘transcend and go beyond’.

I encourage any and everybody to look for, in their lives, someone who can exemplify emotional mastery to them, who, even though we cannot (and don’t even want to) be exactly like them, can serve as an inspiration and help us hold an image of what it means to be positive; what it looks like to draw on and manage our emotions so we make the most of life; and to help us remember that, as the song says “the best of times is now!”