I'm going to make everything around me beautiful.

That will be my life.

Elsie DeWolf.

Changing for the better is not about the creation of miracles.

It's about choosing to see the ones that already exist.

Life is hard, but coincidentally hard things tend to be the gatekeepers to the important ones.

We are let in when we bring ourselves finally to shake hands with

and embrace the very things we once saw as the problem.

Whereas Ryan Holiday has famously put it, the obstacle tends to be the way. How funny,

how counterintuitive, how upside down life can see. But I think that's it. Sometimes it's not even that we're looking at the wrong

things. So we're looking at the right things the wrong way. Avoiding the call to step further into

the world and deeper into ourselves. Terr terrified of scraping our knees on the climb,

we burden ourselves

with the much more painful choice

of staying at the bottom of the mountain and looking up.

But the scars we've collected and will continue to collect on the way up,

they do not make you less than, no, they are what make you beautiful.

You see yourself and those scars is imperfect.

I see someone who has lived, who has taken risks, fallen, and bounced back.

I see character and wisdom and elegance and boldness.

In an imperfect world, those quote unquote flaws and scars may, funny enough, just be the closest thing to perfection we'll ever experience.

It's from our courage to step out, our willingness to crack that we flourish.

...