Do cartwheels in life. Live your life with aplomb. Live it with zeal. Live it as you would eat a wonderful meal set before you. Take a heaping plate. Take big bites. Fill your cup, drink it, smack your lips, and pour yourself another.

You have held back from life long enough in a desire to be safe. What is it you would protect yourself from? From Life? From you?

Of course, your safety measures don't work anyway. Life finds you and won't let you hide from it. It pulls you this way and that regardless of how many locks you have on your door. Life gets in, but life is not a robber. Life is a giver, and it insists that you partake. You might as well leap high.

What is it that makes you afraid of jumping into the midst of life? What makes you hold back? What is it that you fear? Instead of fearing, dance into the middle of life, hands on your hips, and say:

"Life, here I am! You've got me and I've got you. Let's give it a whirl! Let's see what we can make of it and how far we can go. This is not a stand-off we are embraced in. We are here together to dance. No longer will I cling to walls and dart around corners, hiding from you. Now I appear before you and become one who lives you. While we are together on Earth, let's dance whatever dance that is called. Be it polka or waltz, I will dance with you. Swing me high, swing me low, we are in this together. I may trip, but I will learn as we go along. I dare to be on the dance floor right in front with you.

"I can run off with you, or I can drag my feet. In either case, you will have me for your partner, and you are mine. You do not give up on me, why should I give up on you? I will stop looking at you over my shoulder. Now I stand before you. Now you tap your foot. Now I put my hands in yours, and we begin this unknown dance and we dance it for all we are worth."

Make friends with life. Be a weed! A weed is not easily taken aback. It doesn't feel sorry for itself. It doesn't say: "Look at that rose! The ground has been tilled for it while here I am, pulled up, and left to fend for myself in a crack in the sidewalk. Poor me! I hardly had a chance. I've been persecuted. The world does not really want me."

No, the weed says: "By whatever name I am called, I have every right to be here. I was created, wasn't I? I will let nothing stop me, nothing daunt me, nothing discourage me, nothing make me feel out of place, for my place is wherever I am. And if I cannot stay right here, I will grow somewhere else. Regardless, I grow. I do not have to be adored by the world. I have my place in the sun, whatever the world may think.

"The sun shines for me just the same. I look at the sun and I follow it. I bask in it. The sun is just as much for me as it is for the rose. The sun blesses the rose, and the sun blesses me. The rose and I have different purposes in life, that's all. The rose has only to be beautiful and sweet. I have only to be strong and thrive and, yes, I confess, while I am at it, improve the soil for the rose."

What do you say to life now?