I came with a big bag of stuff. It was super heavy but at least my duffle is a rolling duffle. They did not charge me extra at the airport so it must have been less than 50lbs. I thought about that when I considered the jerry cans of water that women carried for eight hours a day to bring their families dirty water. With slugs in the soup. I wonder how much stuff Scott Harrison of Charity Water travels with when he goes to make deals with villages to drill wells. I really like my birthday. One year I hired a real live improvisational comedian to fly out to my town from NYC and teach 30 of my friends how to be funny and then we broke open an Elmo piñata. Still, if people will donate money in order to give people clean water instead of presents then I’m all for it. Those slugs are gross.

I had a backpack with me too, did I mention that? I was sitting there as Chris Brogan was slinging superheroes, comics and Dungeons and Dragons like he was speaking directly to me. It was like he knew that I had two prepaid, advanced digital tickets in my backpack for next week’s Dark Knight Rises film. He was born in 1970 just like me and we’re both Batman fans. I wonder if Brogan’s going to the midnight showing, too. I wonder if those superhero cards will serve as agents of change to the masses of uninitiated geeks. I was already a geek but it was fun to fly the freak flag together.

I thought about all my stuff squeezed into the pack when I listened to Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott talk about their treks around the globe and how life truly came down to the relationships they made with complete strangers who weren’t really strangers once they got to know them. Made me think of the complete strangers who rifled through my bag at the airport and left the Velcro handles unfastened. How do Dan and Audrey respond to all those pat downs and bag searches? I thought about their mileage programs. I felt petty for thinking about that but I was glad no one could read my mind.

I had outfits for all types of situations and events and climates. I like to be prepared and I like to feel like I am ok in a crowd. I like to blend in but I like the choice of standing out if I feel safe. Do I sound like an introvert? Sometimes I worry that people think I’m stuck up because I think too much without sharing what it is I’m thinking about. I’m not stuck up, I’m an introvert posing as a gregarious fellow.  My life is like a back and forth between Susan Cain and Jonathan Fields. A little witty, a little shy, a little sarcastic, a little nosey. Good thing I brought my Bose noise canceling headphones so I can simultaneously tune out and tune in.

I packed too much. I anticipated everything. I had a zip loc bag of almonds and two packs of gum. Cash. I had cash for tips, coffee and food trucks. I could always give some extra singles to homeless folks. Is that bad?

I checked the Weather Underground and read blogs and watched videos by people who attended last year. I looked at my closet and tried things on that I felt good in and that I felt others would want to see me in. I recently gained some weight and didn’t fit into my really “good” Banana Republic clothes. They used to be the clothes I felt empowered in so I had to go with clothes that I didn’t feel were too tight. This way I could make ideas happen without worrying too much about my clothes.

I brought essential oils because they make me smell good and relax me.

I brought 3 Apple products with appropriate cords. I like to be connected and I like toys. My IPad is a toy even though I use it to tweet you because you could be a client or a potential client or I might blog on my iPad and thus it becomes a business tool. I should be an entrepreneur.

Shoes. 3 pairs of shoes. I know. A little plastic container for all of my receipts, it being a business trip and all. It was super Slim.

I brought cool T-shirts with cool messages on them and then some plain white T’s because maybe cool messages aren’t as cool as plain white ones are. I liked the volunteer who sliced and diced her yellow shirt and made it into something fashionable. Maybe Megan Hunt could sell that to some brides as part of her $100 Start Up. She’s so cool.

I forgot my own partially read copy of the $100 Startup but they gave me one in my swag bag. I looked Megan up and she’s like all over that book. I wonder if she would have been my friend if she knew how much stuff I crammed into my suitcase. Well, rolling duffel.

Sunglasses. It’s summer. I wore them once. They were cheap ones though, from a supermarket, although very heavily tinted so I could even watch a Firestarter do her thing without hurting my sensitive eyes.

Vitamins. Lots of vitamins. I tend to mess with my immune system when I eat too much and drink too much. I can’t afford to get sick. I’m an entrepreneur. Wow, though…I never drink that much at home. I mean yeah I eat that much at home but the drinking, no. As Cal Newport suggested, we can’t really set out to do what we’re passionate about, we have to do something we’re good at and eventually the passion finds us. Headaches passionately found me four mornings in a row. I should have brought more Excedrin in my toiletry bag. Note to self for next year. Wait, how do I get there without trying to get there, again…?

Brene Brown defines vulnerability as the uncool combination of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. What does it take to be truly vulnerable? Who do you allow yourself to be vulnerable with and in what situations do you choose to expose yourself? Finding a tribe where one can simply be themselves and find love and acceptance is one of life’s most wondrous occurrences. Belonging is a bridge to transcendence whereas fitting in can be a cage in which we sit quietly, waiting. One simply can’t stop believing. Wait, was it don’t stop believing or belonging…?

I came to WDS with a sizeable amount of baggage and it felt incredible to be accepted as a tribal member. I even danced! Thanks Chris Guillebeau and your amazing integrity, vision and kick-ass-starting execution. A hundred dollars ($US) will never feel the same.

Since the days of the Roman Ampitheatres and the classic thumbs up or down, we have been conscious, cautious and concerned about other people’s opinions. In the old days, a thumbs down meant your death. Today a thumbs up means you reposted someone else’s witty comments, a photo-shopped, rainbow laiden, Unicorn-riding Obama, or simply manifested 100 characters of your own brilliance. Either way, we seem to mind quite a bit whether, and whomever, someone notices.

I post status updates for 30K Twitter Followers and 6K Facebook followers every day. It started out as a social experiment a few years ago and now, I find myself wondering why some people LIKE my posts and others don’t. Every morning I send birthday wishes to a dozen Facebook friends and I rarely know them personally. I feel guilty when I go on vacation or life becomes such that I simply can’t write the birthday notes. I stopped blogging last year when it seemed like the same handful of beautiful friends were the only one’s reposting my work on their Facebook pages. Perhaps I had run out of things to say that you would like?

Many people use the word addiction far too loosely so in the auspicious days of Woods, Weiner, and Sandusky, I think it is very important to be careful not to get confused when it comes to real addiction (process or substance notwithstanding) and mild obsession. I would say that while a small fraction of our society is truly addicted, most of us are mildly obsessed when it comes to the whims and fancies of our friends and families. Mild to moderate, at least.

A friend of mine’s mother recently posted photos of her grandchildren playing in the pool. They are, admittedly, particularly cute. When her fellow octogenarian Facebook friends failed to “Like” the slideshow, she exclaimed: “What, their grandkids are cuter than mine?!? Stupid people. Maybe I’ll try Twitter.”

A very wise man named Fred Rogers once noted that “(t)he connections we make in the course of a life–maybe that’s what heaven is… We make so many connections here on earth. Look at us–I’ve just met you, but I’m investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can’t help it.” Leave it to Mr. Rogers to put things into perspective when it comes to social networking and our cultural need for external approval.

I do believe it comes down to that sacred space between us, the meeting in the middle between your light and my own. Somehow the pull to hear your praise or simply see your “Like” affirms the magic and beauty of life that I feel within my Self and for the rest of the planet.

When I was a boy, I was all hung up on Bruce Jenner. Before he became the Guardian of the Kardashians, he was the epitome of the all American athlete, winning this “athalon” and that “athalon…” When my father informed me that Jenner grew up not far from where we lived in suburban New York, his status was crystallized in my superhero driven mind.

While I didn’t actually watch the Olympics when he competed, he seemed to show up on every cereal box down the “crunchy fun” aisle, from Wheaties to Special K, and he became an instant hero. Bruce Jenner was a real life Superman. I knew Superman didn’t really exist but Bruce Jenner did.

At the same time, a new brand of sneaker called Zips came onto the scene with a particularly flashy ad campaign. Tween boys would slip on a pair of the special shoes and take off into the sky like home grown super heroes. I wanted Zips (with the BIG ‘Z’) on my feet because I required the added speed they would surely provide thus allowing me to run like the wind around my block for hours. I was seven years old and I honestly believed the claims they made on TV that they would double my speed. I was already crazy fast, but double? Faster than a speeding train?

My mother, against her better judgment and far above the modest cost of my usual pair of Keds agreed to get me the magic running shoes at Marshall’s Shoe Store. I had them out of the box and on my feet before we pulled into the driveway. It was a warm summer day and the sun (as well as the son) still had some legs before dusk. I reassured my mother that I’d be back around the enormous block in no time…I now possessed the proper equipment to optimize my performance.

Whoooshhhhaaaaaa! I was like lightning out of the gate.

I was sure I could feel my new sneakers lift the rubber soles above the sweltering pavement helping me achieve a supernatural cruising altitude. I already envisioned my beaming face on the Wheaties box, relishing the jealous stares of every little boy around the breakfast tables of America.

I was on fire.

Until I hit the Wall.

My wiry, little legs pumped faster and harder than they had ever experienced previous to Zips Day and they suddenly, simply, said “No.”

“But…? But, I have the Zips now?”

“No. Done. Over. You’re a scrawny little kid and it’s hot out and there’s that German Shepherd growling and did you really think plastic shoes would make you faster? You’re done. Just stop. Walk it on home. Retire while you’re at your peak.”

By the time I made it around the block and back to the driveway, my mother was leaning against the car, waiting.

“So?”

“They don’t work,” I said.

My Zips spent the rest of their short life in the Closet of Effective Marketing and Irreconcilable Dreams.

Since then I have experienced a complex relationship with running.

I tried running away from home. I ran toward the bus on the first day of grade school. I ran around in circles for High School Track and Field. I ran through forests and streams on the Cross Country team. I have run toward women, sprinted past them and scrambled frantically away. Running has been a significant part of the journey, any way you scissor-kick it.

Yet, always, the process of running; the thrill, ecstasy, passion and perspiration has been visited by the Wall. The voice of negativity and reason, low self esteem and broken records; my Wall is the accumulated shadow for all of my life’s great accomplishments, lurking…prowling…waiting to pounce on the first sign of false hope, misguided focus and lactic acid.

So, why do I continue to run? Through injuries and shin splints, muffin tops and fat tires…? Why do I accept facing the Wall every time I strap on my Nike Plus and unleash the hip hop?

There’s something about running that is more integral a part of me than the feet I use to run with because it demands a connection between my heart, mind and body. I must not only get past the pain and just plow through the Wall, I must uncover the joy of feeling my fullness, my wholeness, my whooshing being, in dialogue with the world around me.

In truth, I have lived the greater part of my life living on the Wall, whooshing back and forth between ecstasy and disaster, optimism and pessimism, trust and disgust.

If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

So many of us live our lives in a state of reaction to Life.

Many of us tend to believe that life is happening to us and that our best chance at attaining happiness is to take our lumps as best we can and hope for the best. Maybe we’ll win the lottery and all will be well.

I believe that all of us, you and I, have an opportunity in this life to not only be free, but to be in a state of peace and joy as well. However, in order to get to that place of peace, we require liberation. Liberation not necessarily from the physical chains that bind us or prisons we occupy; liberation from the thoughts and ideas that keep us trapped in disappointment, resentment and sadness.

Victor Frankl was an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist who spent much of the Holocaust in a concentration camp. Upon his physical liberation from that veritable Hell, he wrote about the process that kept him alive all those years in captivity. More than anything, Frankl suggested, the realization that even locked away in a concentration camp was he free provided the greatest awareness that fed a deep sense of empowerment. He became clear that no matter what anyone does to us, no matter our external circumstances, we always have the ability to choose our attitude.

(T)here is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, and existence restricted by external forces…. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. (1963, Man’s Search For Meaning, p. 106)

This sense of choice when it comes to our state of mind, our affect, and our response to the world is, at its core, our Liberation. The manner in which we answer the beauties and the challenges of life is what sets us free to joyfully dance to the pulse of creation in each heartbeat.

At its core, it is this choice which liberates us to Life.

What liberates you to your life? What thought, opinion, or decision frees you to make love to life as the sky makes love to the earth?