The single most important empowerment for rising above discouragement

Not going to waste any time here getting to the point. The most important empowerment is having a friend or two that you can connect with whenever the gloomies start invading your happy space.

For instance I have one friend who though we are hundreds of miles apart I can call up almost any time and we simply talk things out till the bad stuff fades away. Sometimes it takes as much as an hour! But she is there for me and I for her. Who can place a value on friendship like this?

And I think it is important to have a couple of friends. Basically I would say I have three. Two are my sisters and one my friend above.

I can read a book on positive thinking or an inspirational story and those help a lot. But nothing cuts through, heals and empowers like a real, honest sharing with a real person.

Doesn't always have to be long. Sometimes someone will share a text message, a cartoon, a cute picture and those help as well.

It's important to both give and receive.

For real empowerment to happen there needs to be reciprocal sharing.

With my friend for instance we start by one or the other talking about the gloomy stuff going on with the day. Once that is out of the way on both sides it's like airing the room inside our hearts for moving forward.

Bad things don't seem so bad. So impossible. So destructible.

Of course I don't want to say that living with one's love of life is not important! Obviously for me, that is above the mark and priceless - but even with loving my husband as much as I do it helps to have other friends to share with as well. Friends keep us young in our heads, our hearts and our soul.

And another thing while I am on the friendship platform is that I think it is important to have friends of all ages and all walks of life. I am sixty-one and I could possibly be moving into that next stage of life where one moves into an "over fifty" community. But not what I want to do. I love looking out my front window and watching the neighbor kids catching the school bus, the young parents going to work and driving kids hither and yon.

We live on a rather busy street (almost a highway) and there is always a constant chain of people going by. Cars, bicycles, and foot walking folks. Lots of the walking ones are poor or at least seem to be. But each one is a valuable link to being part of the universe we all dwell in.

Gated communities tend to be of one age group (most retired) and of one income level. Like a cocoon they shield themselves from the needs, hopes and desires of a bigger , needy world. And actually thinking about it there are also communities of the poor who are set apart in much the same way. Locked into their poverty and tough conditions they too can become comfortable in an opposite sort of way. Of course we just naturally strive for our own "comfort zones" and "comfort neighborhoods" and I am sure it's not a bad thing totally but I think it is healthier and holier to stretch at least in some way to other people.

Because in the end - when we transfer to the after life (I believe there is one) a lot of the outer wrappings of who we are will be stripped away. What happens then?

Don't have a clue but I think it's important to be open to love from all kinds of people.