A Letter to You from Me

“The word that is heard perishes, but the letter that is written remains.”  ~Proverbs

Today’s post is very different from the posts I’ve published here at Meant to be Happy to this point. I usually write about a topic related to a personal development issue.

But not this time. This is a letter written directly to you, my regular reader, my periodic reader, my newcomer, my tried and true, to all of you.

I want you to know how I feel about you, about who you are to me and what that means to me. I don’t take lightly the time you spend reading what I have to say. I’m moved and touched and honored by it.

And so please indulge me as I share a few thoughts with you about you.

Seven Messages I want to share with you today:

1. I love the person you are

I care about you. I care about who you are. You matter to me both as the founder of Meant to be Happy and as a fellow human being. I love the goodness that is in your heart and the desire you have to learn and grow and become even more and even better than you were yesterday.

I love those of you I’ve gotten to know as we’ve communicated here and by email and those I’m getting to know. And I love those who come and read what I say but haven’t yet left a comment – including those who never will. I love you as a fellow-traveler along the road of life. I love you as someone dedicated – no matter how imperfectly – to living a life of personal growth, of happiness and character.

2. I appreciate you

I’m grateful for your comments and kind words, for your emails and support, your wisdom and challenges and insight and trust. The comments you’ve left. The emails I’ve received. The readership and daily visits. It means more to me than I have words to convey. It humbles me.

I’m filled with appreciation for all you are and all you aspire to be. I appreciate your dedication to things like standards and decency.

How do I know you aspire to live decent lives of high moral standards? I guess I don’t, really. But what I do know is that you care enough about living life well, and living it more joyfully that you come here in search of answers or insight or motivation or little reminders that we’re in this thing called life together, often stumbling in the dark side-by-side.

I write quite a bit about character and the role it plays in our happiness. And yet you continue to come back and read. That says a lot about you as well.

Some people don’t want and won’t even tolerate such challenges to their fragile inner cores. You do. Why? Perhaps because your core is not so fragile. And perhaps because character matters to you. I appreciate that about you.

3. I’m proud of you

I want you to know what you may not have been told before, or told only too infrequently:

I’m proud of you.

I’m proud of you for trying. For placing one foot in front of the other. For waking up every morning and simply giving it your best shot. I’m proud of you for placing a premium on personal growth too.

There are relatively few people who work at living well. Many more people, it seems to me, work much harder at getting than becoming. They work at doing more than being. They strive harder at looking better than being better.

Literally billions of dollars are spent annually trying to appear improved and so much less energy and resources on actually improving.

But not you. Your focus is on the quality of person you are over the image and façade we sometimes pretend to be. I’m proud of you for your desire to improve and grow, to stretch and challenge yourself.

You see, it matters less where you might be today at this moment on the character and happiness continuum than the direction you’re pointed in and the strides you’re taking toward improving.

I’m proud of you for taking those steps. I’m proud of you for being you and working to rise to the best you inside of you.

4. I believe in you

You are an amazing being with amazing God-given capacity. I believe in who you are and who you are working to be. We are all works-in-progress. One of life’s purposes is to improve on the wiring under the hood of our lives. I believe in your ability to stand and courageously be the person you were meant to be.

I’m not perfect. Nowhere near it. I’m a flawed human being. I’m a flawed husband. A flawed father. A flawed neighbor. A flawed blogger. I have weaknesses and character blind spots. We all do. That fact doesn’t define us. What defines us is what we’re doing about it.

You see, the ability to grow and climb and reach and evolve is infinite. You are infinite and eternal. I believe in your ability to rise above and break through and overcome. I believe in your human capacity to survive and change and improve. I believe in your capacity to learn and apply the principles of happiness to live with joy as you develop those qualities that happy people share.

5. You can be whatever you want to be

As a person who can shape and reshape your inner world, I also believe you can become what you most want to become.

It may take sacrifice and hard work and sustained effort over time. Maybe over a long period of it. But I believe there are paths to what you want most in life.

You can become what you wish to become, even if it takes more work than you’ve ever extended to do anything else before in your life.

Of course, sometimes what we want won’t serve us very well. In that case, I also believe we can be inspired to reevaluate what we want and align our desires with our capacities and what’s in our long-term best interest.

But in the end, it is who we are that matters, not how much we’ve been able to stuff in our closets and stack on our shelves and pad our accounts with.

6. You are important to me

I cherish the relationship we’ve established. I don’t take it lightly or for granted. You have lent me something precious and special. You have lent me your time and your interest. I thank you for that.

I care about your life and your happiness. I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t. I care about you as a person. We are spiritual siblings, you and I. I know this to be true. And it means a lot to me.

As such, I want the best for you. While I guarantee I’ll fall short of my goal simply because I’m a flawed human being, I will nonetheless strive to always provide you with something of value here, something that helps, that points, that inspires.

That, at least, is my aim. Please feel free to hold me to it and call me out if I slip too many times.

7. You are beautiful

Have you ever been told how beautiful you are? You are a beautiful person because you strive to create beauty in your life by the way you work at living it and in your heart by the way you choose to open it and share it. The external is the shell to the person. You, the person, are already beautiful. And I bask in that beauty.

Final thoughts to my readers

The first month of the new year is at an end. And as it folds into the next, I’ve felt inspired to write this note to you, to let you know how much you are appreciated, loved, accepted and cherished.

I wish you God’s greatest blessings. Sometimes that comes in the form of a challenge to get us to take the next step we need to take in life. Sometimes it is something more obviously amazing and beautiful.

But in whichever form your blessings come this year, know they come with my belief that you were meant to be happy.

You were meant to be amazing.

You were meant to live a life of challenge and growth, of courage and decency, of kindness and compassion, of love and strength and service and joy.

May that be the road you travel this year and all your life.

And you just might bump into me along the way; I’m doing my best to travel that road with you!

Thank you for the companionship.

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Photo courtesy of Pixabay