This chain e-mail first was put together by the Dalai Lama, Kurt Vonnegut or two drunk guys at a Jiffy Lube. Take your pick. Whoever wrote this, the messages that follow are words of love and self-actualization, and if you do not forward it to 10 people, your skin will peel off and one of your kidneys will climb up through your throat and crawl away from your body.

This e-mail has been forwarded to you by someone you know who felt that it was more important to shift this groundless threat away from himself than to maintain his friendship with you.

Wisdom

•  Don't judge those who try and fail. Judge those who talk funny and eat weird food.

•  This is what it is to succeed: To bring joy to a child. To appreciate beauty. To make others obey you, through shouting.

•  You must love yourself before you can love others. Freaky, heh?

•  When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Then drink it while thinking intensely about revenge.

•  A friend is someone who
shares laughter for our triumphs
and walks with us through our fears.
A friend is someone who
keeps our feet from stumbling
and talks us through our tears.
But mostly, a friend is someone who
does not borrow our VCR
and sell it for crack.
I had assumed you knew this.

Affirmations

Read the following set of affirmations over and over as you go about your day, until people start making more room for you on the bus:

•  I am a unique project of the universe. An Inner Light speaks through me, as it does through every flower and star. No, wait. That's not me. I'm thinking of that guy on Hollywood Squares. Gilbert Gottfried.

•  Whenever I need guidance, I go to a quiet place and wait for all to settle in my mind and heart. When it does, I can hear a quiet inner voice, and each time, the voice says the same thing: "The guys are right. These new glasses look dumb."

•  God thinks I'm funny. But not "ha, ha" funny.

•  I am connected to everything and everything is connected to me. I am never alone. Except when I try talking to my kids.

•  If someone doesn't love me as I wish to be loved, I still think it is technically possible to force them.

•  God is everywhere. No, wait. That's not God. That's the cops.

Great quotes by dead people:

•  Albert Einstein:
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Then again, so have a lot of people who would otherwise go around sniffing nail polish. So I don't know what to tell you."

•  Goethe:
"Enjoy what you can; endure what you must. But above all, never sing along at the ballet. We didn't pay $45 to listen to you."

•  Booker T. Washington:
"It is said that success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed. But come on. Who are we kidding?"

A story about awareness and discovery

Once during Yom Kippur when I was a child, I asked my Hassidic grandfather the practical reasons we fasted on that particular holy day. He himself was fasting then, but as he fasted, he also was eating an enormous cake. It had whipped cream and raspberries and possibly a turkey leg and Canadian bacon or something.
Anyway, he said to me, "When we fast, we break one of our most basic habits. And when we emerge from the numbness of habit ..." and at that point he took another bite of cake and talked with his mouth full of frosting and meat "... when we awaken from our habits, we become more aware of the world, and therefore, more aware of God."
"I see," I said. "But what I don't understand is, how does that cake fit into all this?"
My grandfather looked at the cake, and after reflecting upon it, replied:
"Aw crud."